Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous
by Wrought
Summary: Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura were not in fact the only rookies in that year. This genin was going to be normal, emotionally well-balanced and happy if it killed her. No easy task in Konoha, where around each corner lurks a tragic backstory. OC, not NarutoxOC
1. Meet Raiku

Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: This is my story, Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous. It's a comedy and at times a parody of the world of Naruto: there's a lack of dull characters I find somewhat odd. Not everyone can have a tragic backstory, so I wanted to tell the story of a character who desperately tried to live a normal life in a world that refused to allow anyone emotionally healthy. A whole family-not-a-clan, more specifically.

To do that, I decided to use a character who _should_ have been more dramatic than she was, who swiftly derailed as many cliches as I could find.

Her name means Lightning.

I'm going to earn the M rating, so beware.

I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, storylines or affiliates.

* * *

It was called the Genematrix, because at least one aspect of their lives had to be cool. The Genematrix was the source of every tragic story, dramatic interlude and attractively damaged character alive and previous. Simply put, its job was to make certain people's lives very interesting.

It was _their_ job, very specifically, not to get caught in it.

"They" were technically a clan in both function and mannerisms, but the word "clan" was a Genematrix fetish and so they were instead a "family united under a common goal". For a very long time this family united produced sickeningly and inappropriately emotionally well-balanced people and sent them off into the world, taking care to remain comfortably middle class even when presented with wealth, and fit enough to survive but not so much so as to lead the pack.

And then _she_ was born.

To be fair, this wasn't her fault.

It wasn't even that she was wilfully malicious- if she had been, it would have been excusable. No, what went wrong was simply this:

Her mother died.

Her mother had some nine months previously stood for a few seconds too long in a Plot Point and had unwittingly spawned herself an electrokinetic daughter who detonated upon birth. Luckily the Genematrix had been stopped from descending on the two minute old murderer by a quick-thinking family member kicking a very surprised and extremely traumatised child in the head.

So maybe it was _her_ fault.

Grief, unfortunately, wasn't exactly a staple of the family, and so her father simply squared his shoulders, dug through the sparking rubble and pulled out the daughter he promptly named. This one, the family united under a common goal thought with deep suspicion, was trouble.

Despite the Genematrix's best efforts, the less than imaginatively named Raiku was raised by a father who was neither abusive nor distant, who brought her up to be decent and to believe in self-sufficiency and the underappreciated value of boredom. Raiku, unsurprisingly, grew up to be pragmatic, emotionally well-balanced and enduring.

This wasn't really the Genematrix's fault either; it was only a force of narrative causality, and it was trying its best.

Raiku was, in a word, average.

Certainly almost all of her skin had to be covered to avoid electrical mishap and negative or positive impacting experiences selectively, and for similar reasons she never went and ultimately didn't know how to swim, but she didn't have a hard or tragic life, and so she considered herself fairly lucky.

Average.

But lucky nonetheless.

To Raiku's credit, she tried. She really did. She was in the middle of her class, occasionally lower, and she had almost no friends. Her relentlessly cheerful personality had gotten her a great deal of suspicious looks as time went on, but she quickly learnt how to brood at appropriate times, and so she went through life largely undetected. Then, as these things do, something happened. A seemingly innocuous series of events apparently unrelated but of course purposeful, would change everything.

The family knew trouble when they saw it:

She was screwed.

* * *

Raiku smiled brilliantly.

Quite literally, as sparks danced along the edges of her straight white teeth. But aforementioned teeth were hidden behind a dark latex mask stretching up from her shirt, so it didn't really matter.

Today was the day she graduated, so unlike most other days, she could smile freely- her natural cheer hadn't made her many friends in the family, and as naturally suspicious creatures, the shinobi had been unsettled and edgy until the instalment of the mask.

She was twelve, and she was allowed to be happy today.

She was also right on time and walked down the sun-drenched street with her gloved hands in her pockets and a distinct air of punctuality that so many more interesting characters have never been able to achieve. She sent an eye-creasing smile to the store-keepers setting up and putting various items on display outside their shops, and they nodded in courteous response.

And that's when it happe-

She put her hands in her pockets, casually derailing narrative form.

The Gairano family was known to be distant, living on the edge of town on a slightly raised part of the mountain, allowing the comfortable compound to slightly overlook the city, alleviating the suffocating aura of the tall concrete buildings. Better yet it was also a really annoying climb, which was why they'd chosen it.

Raiku waved cheerfully to someone she didn't know particularly well as she crossed the street to the earthen schoolyard, weaving between families bidding kids tearful goodbye on their first day of school. Expression fixedly cheerful above the mask, she ducked under carelessly made arm gestures, what would have been a shock of white hair dyed carefully brown and tragically spiky.

No amount of hair curlers, scissors, hair gel or chakra would make the hair fall down in anything but loosely formed spikes, but they'd adjusted by cutting it so short even normal hair would have been spiky.

'Oi, Sakura!' a blonde girl with a devilishly smug expression called to a pink haired friend. Raiku murmured an excuse when she had to brush past, barely squeezing free of the throng to rest in front of the school building, a tall brick structure painted cheerfully with a traditional roof.

There was a distinct void in the noise next to her, and she looked up from the ground, hands resting on her knees as she caught her breath and cooled down.

Uchiha Sasuke – level five risk of drama. Impressive, since there were only three levels.

He looked down at her dispassionately.

She made a two fingered, casual salute and walked off as quickly as it was possible to nonchalantly walk off. A tall man in the garb of a chuunin smiled down at her warmly as she slipped her shoes off just inside the school doors, absently scratching a scar on his nose. 'You ready for the test today?' he asked, tucking his hands into his vest.

'Yes!' she responded cheerfully, smiling with equal warmth and bowing as much as she could. It was a learned skill, bowing from the bent position of removing shoes without tripping endearingly, but she'd learnt it well. She bowed again and padded past him, leaving Iruka fighting off the strange sensation of immediately and automatically forgetting a student he'd just spoken to.

'Raiku,' a boy with grey hair and a piece of grass in his mouth nodded, brooding aimlessly like all shinobi did when they weren't killing things. She waved, sitting down cross-legged outside the classroom door, just under the drawer she'd put her bag into. 'Ready for the test? We gotta pass to graduate,' he said to break the silence stretching on.

'Yep,' she confirmed readily. He made a curiously adult noncommittal sound and looked away, crossing his arms across his chest and leaning against the wall.

'R-,' a shy, stuttering voice began. Raiku's head whipped around, ready with a stock expression comprised of sparkling eyes and a cheerful tilt to the head.

Hyuuga Hinata- level one risk of drama.

The dark haired girl jerked back in surprise at the quick reaction, and Raiku counted in the pause before speaking. 'Hi!' she chirped. She decided chirping was a bit much. 'How are you?' she asked with a substitute of mild cheer.

'Okay,' Hinata said almost hesitantly. The stutter would drive her insane if she was in a team with her. Or it would drive Hinata insane- Raiku was incredibly patient, but with an average heartrate of three beats per second what was a long time for her was a startled silence for someone else, leaving her finishing other people's sentences when they took too long.

The white-eyed girl blushed. Perpetually, but it was noticeable right now. She could hardly be blamed, with that Plot sitting in her shadow. Only it wasn't the poor things fault this time, with the hyperactive blonde suddenly hanging off the smaller girl's shoulder.

'Hinata, you seen Iruka-sensei?' Naruto grinned with almost manic cheer. 'N-N-,'

'Iruka-sensei!' Naruto exclaimed, pelting down the hallway. Uzumaki Naruto – drama level ten, human whirlwind.

Raiku blinked rapidly in alarm as Hinata swayed ominously. 'He's gone!' she exclaimed quickly. Hinata caught herself, flushing scarlet with embarrassment.

'Come on,' Iruka sighed in good natured exasperation, casting the clan member a look and unlocking the classroom door.

Raiku let Hinata enter first, climbing up the plain wooden steps to a spot three rows from the back, near but not too near a window. Uchiha usually sat a few in front, so she should be free of the fangirls today, free to do the test and enjoy the last day of genin school.

Someone tragically high on the drama ranking cleared their throat in irritation.

Raiku smiled down at the front.

There was a silence.

'You,' Uchiha said, dark eyes looking at her irritably.

She turned her head, blinking up at him curiously. He was almost feminine in beauty, but the drama rank stamped onto his forehead stopped her from liking him. He waited expectantly, eyes drifting from her to the empty place next to the window pointedly.

He was going to use her as a fangirl shield.

She cringed.

He noticed.

He scowled at her and pushed past, settling with an almost spiteful efficiency. There was a pink haired girl shooting her the most threatening stare she'd ever received.

Raiku broke into a cold sweat.

A Plot oozed its way over the desks towards her: and then there was the one girl in the village who didn't love Uchiha Sasuke, who might just have been- she slammed her elbow onto the desk, and the Plot gave a feeble sound, like air released from a cushion, and vanished.

She felt the deadpan stare coming from her left, and smiled in the general direction of the front of the classroom nervously. The stare shifted off her, like a pressure alleviated. Maybe she shouldn't have assumed today would be so carefree after all. She sank down in her chair, troubled eyes just above the level of the desk. Someone turned into a naked woman.

She should have been sick today.

There was a loud crash as drama level ten made his presence known.

Dead, maybe.

* * *

'You've got a Plot on you,' her father said absently, stirring his noodles with his left hand and holding a brush with the other. Raiku blanched, already large eyes rounding to impressive size.

He smirked.

'You're a jerk, and you can't paint,' she informed him stiffly, turning her nose up in the air and putting her bag on the table. She slipped her shoes off, fixedly ignoring his snickers. Her father was roughly six feet tall with a wiry build, hardly unusual for a shinobi. His hair was thin but didn't look to be going anywhere, dark brown and trimmed short on the back and sides. Dark brown eyes glimmered with good humour over the table at her, taking in the headband place securely on her forehead. The steel felt strangely heavy and the fabric left a few square inches of skin left between mask and headband, which was ideal.

'Going for the direct, standardised approach?' he asked, recognising it was odd for a new genin to wear it so plainly.

Raiku narrowed her eyes at him. He grinned at her, looking down at his ink painting again. Their house was made from wood and very traditional, because it was old rather than because it was the feeling they tried to get across. There was a great deal of light in their home simply because they liked it that way, and while there was an occasional painting or picture the entire home was largely plain.

The shoji doors weren't so fortunate- they'd been expertly mended, but the fixes were clear to the eye when less than a metre away. Her father lamented the loss of the beautiful doors they had around their small shrine, but she refused to wear as many clothes in her own home as she had to outside, especially in summer. All in all, the skin exposed to the elements was the remaining square inches on her face.

Raiku yanked down the mask that reached the bridge of her nose, nudging his chair with her elbow on her way past him to the kitchen, placed around the corner. 'Good day at school then I take it?' he grinned at her back, keen eyes taking in the starts of white roots.

'I passed,' she confirmed, pulling down a satchet of instant miso, rubbing a hand through her hair at the pointed look.

'You've gotta dye it,' he reminded her, watching the kettle suspiciously.

'I know. And dad,' she added after a moment, expression deadpan. 'I'm twelve. I'm okay with a kettle, really I am.'

He sniffed, looking down his hawk-like nose at his noodles. 'Teammates?' he asked, changing the subject.

'Hatori Daisukenojo and Ryuu,' she said, stirring the water and the mixture together.

'Just Ryuu?' he asked, raising an eyebrow.

'I forget his last name,' she said dismissively.

'Daisukenojo,' her father muttered to himself, trying not to laugh.

'He's nice!' she said defensively, putting her hands on her hips.

'Sure,' he managed, shoulders shaking with repressed mirth.

'You're a jerk, you know that right?' she demanded.

'Sure,' he repeated again, biting the inside of his cheek.

'Dad,' she said warningly, narrowing her eyes at him. 'You only think this is funny becau- Plot!'

He slammed a foot onto the oozing black mass as it crossed to her, amusement vanishing with it.

There was a long silence.

'Well, looks like defending someone to me's out,' he said eventually, sending her a grin.

'You suck,' she said flatly, sipping her miso.

They fell into familiar, comfortable silence. Her father vanished from the room briefly, coming back with a towel, newspaper, gloves and a small packet of brown hair dye. 'I hope you know people think this is for me,' he said, waving it at her. 'They think I'm going grey. Grey! At my age! Thirty six!'

Wisely, Raiku kept her mouth shut regarding certain temporal discrepancies, choosing to finish her miso instead.

'Come on Sparky,' he gestured, pulling the gloves on. 'And try not to zap me this time.'

She quirked a brow as minute sparks dissipated in the air she exhaled.

'Show off,' he rolled his eyes.

Life as normal.

* * *

A/N: Criticism and advice appreciated. I'm as yet still getting a feel for the character, and while it may seem as though it's not really a Naruto story as such, I promise that that is temporary. Right now I'm establishing character, but as well as that I wanted to focus on Raiku's life. She lives a life that borders on normal for us, which is exactly what I wanted to achieve here.

Send me your ideas.


	2. Run Raiku, Run

Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Well, we've made it to chapter two. I've decided I didn't like how lacking in flaws Raiku was, so welcome to reality, baby, because it's going to _sting_.

If you read it and like it, please review. If you read it and hate it, bring it on. If you read it and _would_ like it if something were better, let me know, and if you'd like to see it go a certain way, I'm open to suggestions at the current.

I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, storylines or affiliates.

* * *

The city of Konoha was beginning to awake, the vigilant sentinels of Continuity ensuring that the unfortunate stayed that way and secrets were kept until the least appropriate possible time for them to be revealed. As usual, the Genematrix hammered on the doors of the Gairano Compound, the complex squatting like a belligerent badger on the foot of the mountain with the words 'CUT TO THE CHASE' emblazoned upon the walls in a suitably obscure foreign language. Someone came out with a broom, pushing at it in a distinctly unfriendly fashion until it went to bother Uzumaki Naruto, who'd never really done anything to deserve it.

In the meantime, Raiku was about to meet her team, Team Ten, for the first time.

'Have fun,' her father grinned devilishly from the door, watching his daughter pause at the doors of their compound.

She instantly turned and narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. Well wishes were not common in this family, since people who took up a habit usually died tragically and left a habit-shaped void in a character's life.

'You're going to meet the man of your dreams,' he said solemnly, in answer to her unspoken question.

'You're lying!' she exclaimed, levelling an infuriated glare at him. 'You never tell the truth!'

'Come on, sweetie, you know I'm not allowed to scare you out of going to your first day!' he protested.

She gave a triumphant cry, pointing at him accusingly.

He paused, caught out, before he hurriedly vanished inside. Raiku's shoulders slumped and she groaned loudly. 'Why can't you be more helpful!?' she called after him.

No response, though he was undoubtedly waiting, pressed against the wall next to the door.

'Gairano, you coming or what!?' a very short, very bright haired genin yelled up the hill, shading his eyes with his hand and squinting against the glare. Daisukenojo was a short boy in a tall family, and no one was going to let him forget it. They probably wouldn't forget the teeth he'd knock out and make them swallow when they said anything to his face, either.

Raiku spun, sending him a thumbs-up while her face creased into its standard, if faintly nervous, smile. All she had to do was stay away from brooding storylines and monologues.

For the rest of her life.

She skidded down the almost sheer cliff face, sending a shower of pebbles and dirt onto the violently red-haired boy, who sputtered in a combination of indignation and rage. 'Sorry!' she called, feet slamming into the ground in practised confidence.

'Why the hell don't you bastards buy some stairs!?' Daisukenojo demanded, shooting her a vile glare from murky hazel eyes. She rubbed the back of her head, smiling apologetically. Daisukenojo was perfect for a teammate- both parents were still alive, he was cute but not handsome, and his inferiority complex made him even angrier than his family was reputed to be.

'We like rock-climbing?' she offered sheepishly. When he failed to laugh, she cleared her throat awkwardly. 'We're meeting Yamada on training ground two, right?'

Daisukenojo, features more freckle than face, didn't say anything.

'Right!' she supplied, eyes almost physically producing joy with the effort she was putting in. 'So let's go!'

Raiku set off at a brisk walk, and after a moment Daisukenojo followed. Vaguely, she wanted him to at least fake civility. It wasn't her fault his name translated to 'big', 'helpful' or 'flower'. Even the Genematrix wouldn't take responsibility for that sort of poor taste. At least he was too belligerent to be deeply traumatised instead of just perpetually aggravated.

'Raiku,' the same grass-chewing grey haired boy greeted, still leaning against a wall though this one was admittedly made of brick and covered in posters. Ryuu's family had given him a perfectly good name when he'd been adopted, so there was absolutely no reason for him to ignore it- her drama sense twinged alarmingly. She gave him an odd look, one eye suddenly larger than the other as she squinted. What would he do if there was no wall to lean on? Fall over? Here was yet another example of poor character construction.

'You're on my team,' he said, taking the grass out to spin between his figures. His hair was the co-

His hair was grey, she noted stubbornly, fixedly ignoring the metaphor that had suddenly come to mind. This one would be tricky. His eyes were so pale brown as to be yellow, and while he was certainly better looking than the Big Helpful Flower, he'd been adopted into a loving family and so presented minimal risk.

She noticed the beginnings of brood lines on his face.

He'd have to be moved up on the drama rankings; he may have family still living, some sort of bloodline or a secretly evil-but-not-actually-evil twin.

'Yes,' she agreed simply and cheerfully.

'And you too, midget,' he said, dismissing the much shorter redhead and falling into place next to Raiku. There was an enraged squawk.

'Please,' she said, brow creasing nervously. 'Don't fight before we even meet our team leader. Please?'

Ryuu made a noncommittal sound.

'I'm going to have to label you a "two" now,' she mumbled under her breath, sticking her hands in her pockets as the concrete under their feet gradually turned to grass, then dirt. This was already less than ideal. Two boys and a girl- not a bad combination, unless the girl was sweet. Raiku wasn't sweet, she was more savoury, and so there was minimal risk _there_. However, a boy with something to prove and a Class Five Brooder was a bad idea.

Ryuu came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the grassy field, turning in full circle to scan the sun dappled trees, wind blowing his hair back in a choreographically attractive way.

_First aversion technique_, she thought to herself, eyeballing the strands shrewdly from underneath her forehead protector. _Cut his hair._

"Being late on your first day isn't a good start!" someone called to them, and there was a rustling of clothes shortly before the ground shook. Raiku started, eyes widening to epic proportions at the feel of the vibrations. Was there a giant coming towards them? Might Gai? Was Might Gai back in town!?

She spun around to face the direction Ryuu had already turned to.

At last, Team Yamada faced Yamada. And he was the size of a mountain.

Under the standard clothes of a Konoha jounin muscles moved fluidly, the biceps resting somewhere at least a foot about Raiku's head, or so it seemed from this angle. She stared up at him, jaw dropping under the mask as the gargantuan man sent her a grin. His jaw was almost perfectly square, his thin lips marked with scars that told them those lips had been sewn shut at least once. His eye colour was almost impossible to tell from this distance, set under a prominent brow and hair so short it may as well have been shaven.

Raiku made an unintelligible, helpless sound in the back of her throat, eyes watering as the sun cast their new teacher in stark illumination. He grinned down at the three genin, hands the size of dinnerplates coming to rest staunchly on his hips.

_I think one of those is bigger than my face_, a voice in Raiku's head whimpered. Raiku was a hundred and sixty centimetres tall, and that was gigantic for a twelve year old girl. This man was… at least a metre taller than her.

Raiku was built like a rail.

He was built like a small country.

"Are you three going to stare at me all day?" Yamada asked, as lightly as a man with the voice of a bear reasonably could, his voice still warranting quotation marks rather than the standard apostrophes.

She swallowed, hard. 'You… have… no eyebrows,' she whimpered eventually, obviously at a loss for something to say. Oh for the fluid vocabulary of a Main Character (Raiku being one of those people who could and would actually think in capital letters). Raiku was really best placed in the Gairano family: she was a certified wimp, which was understandable when you have arms like noodles, and thus she was completely unsuitable for the arduous physical and emotional strain of a Plot.

The aforementioned area where the eyebrows should have been wrinkled slightly as he shot her a sceptical look. This was clearly not what he'd been expecting. A thin girl, skin completely covered but for that around disproportionately large, electric blue eyes and almost rudely spiky hair. A taller, lanky boy at least slightly more muscular stood next to her with grey hair and strange eyes, glowering up at him unabashedly. That short guy. He was already starting to rue the day he got that damn short guy. They were always the meanest.

Yamada's grin stretched even further across his face.

He knew it was a mistake as soon as he did it. The girl blanched, eyes appearing to swallow up her face.

_His grin is as big as my entire face, _she thought weakly.

"Alright!" he said briskly, looking away in what would, in a man about a metre shorter, have been called awkwardness. "We're Team Ten! And you know what that means."

'It means there are nine teams better than us?' Ryuu guessed dully, sticking his hands into the pockets of his black, three quarter pants. In the face of this kid who appeared about five hundred in terms of personality carbon dating, Yamada was beginning to realise that he may have been better off in ANBU.

"That'll be twenty push-ups, kid," he instructed, sticking his own, far more impressive hands in his pockets.

Wind whistled through the grass in the otherwise perfect silence. Somewhere, a Gairano stole the shoes of a girl from Kansas.

Yamada loomed over the much shorter genin, eyes burning like hostile stars in the middle of an unfriendly sky, fist held up and shaking with righteous fury.

Ryuu dropped to toes and fingertips.

"One – It _means_ – two ," Yamada said, suddenly cheery, counting out the push-ups with malicious glee. "We're Team – four – Ten. Nothing else, got me? Five. Slowing down there?" he asked Ryuu, eyes glinting evilly, resting his boulder sized foot between his shoulder blades.

'No,' Ryuu forced out.

"Good! Six." He looked towards the other two, one of which was shaking slightly. It had to be the heat, he decided, almost worried for the stick. The Gairano family were always a bit… eccentric, but the clothing had to be pushing it. "You've gotta be the best _you_ can be, and stop worrying about the other teams. Worry about them later, got me?"

'You say "got me" a lot,' the midget criticised.

Yamada glowered. "Accurate observations- that's fifteen push-ups!"

Raiku edged back, afraid she was going to be next as Daisukenojo dropped. This jounin was more of a drill instructor than a shinobi. Which yeah, was just what they needed, but she was actually beginning to prefer the tragic past and occasional monologue. She was getting the impression he was a nice man, who liked yelling.

But nice men had no right to be over six feet tall.

"In case you ladies haven't noticed," Yamada said cheerfully, apparently possessing the ability to trade between moods faster than Raiku could blink. "We're going to be training _endurance_ today. That means you, skinny, so drop!" he roared, abruptly changing approach again.

There was no _immediate _response, but the second he pointed at her threateningly Raiku shrieked in terror and ran, furious footsteps and convenient alliteration leaving a trail of dust flying up after her.

Daisukenojo collapsed onto his side in hysterics as Yamada stared after her, then came back to his senses and pointed at her rapidly retreating back. "You get back here! Ten more push-ups for you!" he added to Daisukenojo, starting after her.

Raiku pelted through the training fields, hurtling over targets and at one point, an entire class of children and Iruka-sensei. Behind her, Yamada-sensei yelled in a way she found distinctly foreboding. She shrieked again, this time in alarm as Naruto and the unfortunate Uchiha came into view. Naruto blanched, taking a step back, shortly before Yamada-sensei came into view as a one-man locomotive: unstoppable and probably about as pissed off as a half-assed metaphor was capable of being.

Naruto screamed. The Uchiha's eyes widened. Raiku ducked under Naruto legs as they flailed, desperately trying to get their largely unresponsive owner to move away. Her own feet dug sharply into the ground, leaving a skid on the road behind her as she came to a gradual halt only just past the blonde, a highly important part of the Gairano code blaring loudly in her mind.

'I'm sorry!' she apologised desperately, dancing slightly on the spot as she tried simultaneously to both get away and apologise. 'I'm sorry!'

'What- what the- Raiku!?' Naruto managed, staring at her. 'What're you doing!?'

'I'm sorry!' she repeated, eyes wide and desperate for some sort of forgiveness, shortly before she was hoisted into the air by the back of her shirt, giving a sharp yelp.

Yamada-sensei eyeballed her threateningly. Sasuke watched in interest as what appeared to be _all_ the colour in her face vanished.

She whimpered helplessly. 'Oi! What do you think you're doing!?' Naruto demanded. His heart was in the right place, but his execution needed work. Yamada cast him a glance, then looked back to the errant, visibly shaking student.

"Was it the pointing?" he asked, tilting his massive head and giving her a shrewd look.

Raiku nodded. She may have nodded. It was feasible that amidst the shaking, there was a nod in there.

"You can't run off every time someone points at you," he reminded her, and realised that his voice actually did sound like he was growling at her.

Another possible nod.

'Your students running away from you, Yamada?' a deep, lazy voice enquired.

Kakashi Hatake – level three risk of drama.

"It's gotta be the pointing," Yamada grumbled, giving the aforementioned student a light shake, as though to emphasise it. "Gotta admit she's quick, though," he pointed out, lowering her slightly. The shorter (though probably quite tall) jounin nodded, one eye impractically covered by his forehead protector, the other droopy one looking directly at them and far more amused than he probably should have been.

"See, I'm not gonna kill you," Yamada said exasperatedly, rolling his eyes. "You see? Everyone gets all worked up over nothing. Feeling pretty stupid now, aren't you?"

'Please put me down,' Raiku whimpered, curled into the foetal position and eyes staring longingly at the ground. Yamada started, setting her firmly on the ground immediately. She collapsed and hugged the concrete lovingly.

"Come on, speedy, we've got some push-ups to catch up on!" Yamada said smugly, nudging her with his foot.

'Okay,' she managed, though she really wanted to scream in terror and beg for mercy because she wasn't sure she wanted to be a shinobi if it meant working with him anymore. She dragged herself into a wobbly standing position that almost failed her as he clapped a hand on her shoulder and successfully jarred her entire skeleton into new, uncomfortable structure. "You're looking like a _taijutsu_ student," he said smugly. His face darkened and she winced, already knowing what was coming.

"Eighty push-ups!" he roared after her rapidly retreating back, Raiku already sprinting back to the training grounds. "And so HELP YOU if you cheat, speedy!" He waited the several seconds it took for her to vanish, before adding, "Nice to see you again, Kakashi," in friendly afterthought, sticking his hands in his pockets and sauntering off, whistling. "She's _really_ quick."

* * *

The sun set in a picturesque fashion, allowing the sunlight to filter through the buildings and shadows to lazily multiply, artificial lights winking into existence as a gentle breeze blew the heat of the day away. From the Gairano compound, this was a truly beautiful, serene end to an uneventful day.

Someone wheezed pathetically, a bruised and scraped hand clawing upwards to grab the top of the small plateau in front of the gates, before the rest of the unfortunate individual hauled themselves up to lie helplessly sprawled on the dirt and grass.

'Yeah,' she panted, in what could loosely be called triumph. She tried to lift a hand to make some sort of victory gesture, but her arm merely jerked sadly. 'Made it,' she managed, head falling back and eyes closing.

The smell of red bean dumplings wafted across on the sweet Konoha breeze.

Her eyes shot open. 'It's… it's not _fair_,' she whispered to herself faintly, vaguely incredulously, wide eyes staring up at the sky.

'Wow, these _ARE_ some delicious dumplings,' her father said in an obnoxiously loud tone, apparently seeing fit to eat outside today, about ten metres away from where she was lying. '_Really_. Raiku _would_ enjoy these, thankyou Mai, but she _appears_ to have gotten _lost_ on the way home from her first day of training! After all, she hasn't gone through those gates _all day_.'

Slowly, Raiku turned her head to shoot her unbearably gleeful father the most poisonous glare she could muster. Even more slowly, she slammed her hand onto the ground and started half-walking, half-crawling through, falling to the ground when she safely passed the perimeter.

'I didn't know you could hurt your forehead muscles,' she groaned. 'Or muscles in your ears. Until today.'

Her father gloated from his chair, while a woman with lovely and dull brown hair stared at her, paused in the middle of serving a distant cousin. Gairanos were in the habit of marrying civilians, for obvious reasons. 'You're home, sweetie! How was your day?' he asked gleefully.

Raiku forced a hand up, tugging her mask down roughly and scraping her nose in the process. Teeth bared, sparks jumped out to die on the ground.

'Now now,' he said in mock solemnity. 'Is that anyway to behave after your very first day?'

Sometimes, Raiku thought as she realised she was truly and utterly incapable of getting to the table to actually eat, the kids with the Plots had it so much easier.

* * *

A/N: Read and review, kind people.


	3. Near Death Experience and Molestation

Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: I'm as yet still establishing characters and their relationships with Raiku (or lack thereof), so this chapter brings in canon characters slightly more than those previous. Ah yes- I need a beta, so feel free to volunteer. Enjoy.

I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, storylines or affiliates.

* * *

Truly, if anything could be said for Yamada, it was that he was thorough. But this… this seemed a little excessive.

The dog's head alone was bigger than she was. While the dog itself wasn't as _tall_, it had to weigh at least twice as much as she did.

"This, ladies, is your very first D-ranked mission!" Yamada informed them jovially, holding the leash the monstrous canine was attached to, leather wrapped thrice around his fist.

It drooled menace.

Raiku stared back at it with a mixture of fascination and complete and utter terror. Terror sucker-punched fascination in the kidney when the dog pulled slightly on the lead in her direction.

'I'll take first go,' Daisukenojo volunteered to everyone's surprise. At their awestruck stares, he coloured defensively. 'I like dogs!'

'That isn't a dog, it's a _bear_,_' _Ryuu pointed out, cringing slightly.

'I'll take… last,' Raiku said, hoping to any god listening that the dog would be tired by then.

'You gonna run away?' Daisukenojo asked, smirking at her insufferably. 'It might eat you, skinny.'

'It'd have an easier time with you, midget,' Ryuu remarked boredly, sticking his hands in his pockets.

Daisukenojo flushed for the second time in as many minutes, this time in anger. 'How about you say-,'

Their volatile leader abruptly unclenched his fist.

"Enjoy!"

The dog lunged for them, suddenly ecstatic with freedom and probably spurred on by Yamada's laughing.

_I will not run away, I will not run away-_

Oh, who was she kidding? Raiku was the best runner in her rookie class, and it was from practice. She managed to take a single step before Daisukenojo grabbed her and held her in front of him defensively, earning a short scream.

'Oh, tough guy!' Ryuu taunted shortly before a bone-crushing display of canine affection bowled him over.

Raiku laughed nervously, eyes darting between the dog and Ryuu's enraged face. 'Let me go?' she offered, laugh turning vaguely hysterical as the dog looked up to trace the voice to its owner.

It stared at her.

She stared back.

'Let me go!' she repeated in higher pitch when it took a step towards her, cavernous eyes shining at her brightly.

Daisukenojo took a wary step back.

The dog saw the opportunity and lunged, trampling Raiku into the ground in its haste to follow him, pressing her hand into the concrete almost hard enough to break it and definitely at least bruising her ribs. Raiku curled into a ball defensively, clamping her hands protectively over her ears.

'Follow HIM! Follow HIM!' Daisukenojo yelled, desperately waving his arms in Ryuu's direction.

'Good _boy_!' Ryuu grinned maliciously as the dog took an uncertain step towards Daisukenojo yet again, caught between the two of them. It looked between them in confusion, a relatively new concept for a dog.

"Just don't make any sudden moves, speedy," Yamada advised Raiku, who was currently trying to make herself conspicuous on the street under the dog's legs. "It'll get bored. Like a _bear_. Bears get bored if you play dead, get me?"

She bit her lip tremulously. 'Why did you have to compare it to a bear?' she squeaked. Drool landed on her forehead and the behemoth happily panted, apparently not intending on going anywhere.

Raiku stared up in traumatised horror as more threatened to descend.

Daisukenojo feinted to the left and cursed when the dog followed his every move. Ryuu inched for the forgotten and trailing end of the lead. 'Easy now,' he breathed, sticking close to the ground and stretching shaking fingers for the leather. 'Easy…'

It gave a joyous bark, dropping and preparing to pounce on him. Raiku gave a pathetic wheeze as the air was successfully driven from her lungs. Ryuu yelled in a distinctly unmanly fashion and tripped backwards. Daisukenojo wasn't as subtle and took a diving roll for the leash, grabbing it just as the dog decided on a target.

Yamada watched the dog bounding- maybe galloping was a better word- down the street with Daisukenojo attached and screaming, and decided maybe this wasn't such a bad gig after all.

Then it came back.

'Make it stop!' Daisukenojo screamed as he flew past in a red blur.

'Don't you _dare_,Gairano!' Ryuu shouted at her from across the street where he was pressed against the wall like it would save him. She threw her leg out and tripped it over, sending the ball of red hair, grey fur and at least four limbs rolling into the wall surrounding the corner.

"That is _not_ how you fight a bear, speedy," Yamada criticised from the safe height of the top of the fence. Said 'bear' lay with its legs in the air, tongue lolling out of its mouth pathetically and a low whine issuing from it.

A hand thrown out from under its bulk twitched, then clawed at the ground as the almost completely encompassed Daisukenojo probably started to suffocate. Muffled wheezing became audible.

Yamada smiled cheerfully. "Not bad for your first mission; all things considered."

The hand stopped wriggling.

'I think Daisukenojo's dead,' Raiku said, eyeing the hand worriedly.

"Yeah," Yamada said smugly. "Not bad for your first mission. Now tell me, where have you three gone wrong today?"

'Shouldn't we help him…?' Raiku offered, cringing in sympathetic pain at Daisukenojo's visible hand.

"Answer my question, speedy!"

'I don't know!' she yelped, covering her head to protect herself from his wrath.

"You didn't _work together_. Now I'm betting that if you two both gave it a shot at once, you could lift Cerberus off Daisukenojo before he dies," Yamada said firmly.

_Its name was Cerberus…?_

Raiku and Ryuu exchanged looks, and wordlessly got to their feet and stood at either end of the deeply embarrassed dog. There was the shared, silent promise that this would never, _ever_ be mentioned again, and they both grabbed canine and pulled.

Cerberus rolled over with an absolutely scandalised expression, and Raiku and Ryuu fixedly avoided each other's gaze in favour of staring at Daisukenojo.

He coughed feebly.

Ryuu nudged him with a none-too-gentle foot, giving him a careless glance. 'Get up, midget.'

'Screw… off,' he managed, almost completely flattened into the street.

'Daisukenojo, can you breathe now?' Raiku worried, crouching next to his head and peering down at him. A dead teammate would be level five Trauma! Anything about level two led to a Drama Ranked Love Interest!

Love Interest.

She shuddered slightly, largely unnoticed as Daisukenojo managed to nod at her. 'Are you sure?' she pressed, forehead wrinkling in concern- just visible under the forehead protector. 'You seem sort of… winded.'

'I'm fine,' he maintained in a shallow wheeze, giving her a thumbs up.

A heavy hand clapped her shoulder and Ryuu's respectively, Yamada standing cheerfully next to the sprawled figure of their teammate. "You see? Working together, you ensured that short stuff lived to see another day! Good work!"

'I hate you… so much…'

"Good!" the giant enthused, shooting him a manic grin. "Now we go back to training, because you three can't even handle a dog!" The thought of training seemed to make him immensely cheerful, plastering a large and dazzling smile over his face as he sauntered in the direction of training ground two.

'He's gotta be putting on an act,' Ryuu said eventually, watching him go. 'Like the Uchiha's sensei.'

Raiku looked up from Daisukenojo, hand still outstretched to help him up. 'Yeah?'

'Yeah. "See what's underneath the underneath," apparently,' Ryuu remarked, sticking his hands in his pockets and following their leader. Raiku tilted her head quizzically before Daisukenojo accepted her help and almost sent her crashing to the ground with his weight, brushing himself off. 'Freak,' he snorted. 'At least he's not some sort of control freak,' he did have the grace to concede.

Raiku nodded, putting an expression of sheepish happiness onto the visible parts of her face, rubbing the back of her head with a hand. Daisukenojo flushed, awkwardly punching her in the shoulder. 'Thanks anyway, skitzoid.'

Raiku blinked. 'What did you call me?' she asked in surprise. Daisukenojo roughly brushed a hand over his face and stalked off, back stiff.

She gawked after him. 'I am _not_ a skitzoid!' she protested, taking off after him.

'I thought you were supposed to be quick!?' he shot back, not that that stopped him from accelerating into a jog. 'I'll show you how quick I am!' she threatened, righteous fury burning in her eyes.

To her credit, it's relevant to point out at this time that Raiku lived a life free from all major sins. She liked puppies, helped old ladies, and was respectful to her father sometimes.

She really didn't deserve what was about to happen to her.

Neither, of course, did Hinata, but that didn't stop the short-haired girl from stepping directly into her path when even Raiku's reflexes couldn't slow her down in time. She had just enough time to turn towards the fake brunette and throw her arms in front of her face before the sidewalk came rushing up to meet the back of her head.

After a few seconds, Raiku groaned, stirring from her position above Hinata. She opened a bleary, electric blue eye as Hinata's terrified face came into view.

… _Detailed_ view.

Raiku blinked in obvious puzzlement. 'Hinata?' she asked curiously. 'When did you get here?'

Hinata swallowed nervously, blank white eyes huge.

Raiku blinked. 'Hinata?'

There was that odd quality in the air that only occurs when someone's watching something the parties involved don't particularly want them to see.

Slowly, Raiku turned her head to her right.

A very beautiful, voluptuous woman was looking down at them, hands resting on white clad hips, dressed in a dress-

Raiku squinted.

...Made out of fabric strips?

The woman's red eyes glinted.

Raiku's head jerked back to star down at Hinata, then down at herself.

Hinata was really worst off here. She couldn't even move, the skin exposed where her jumper had ridden up now almost exposed to the skin of Raiku's wrist, even the several inches of proximity sending a mild electric current through her. The main problem was actually that one of Raiku's legs was thrown on either side of her, and neither of them had moved.

A shaggy haired boy with a puppy on his head grinned with appropriate wolfishness.

Raiku yelped and lunged to her feet and back several steps, bowing so low she almost bent in half. 'I'm sorry!'

'I'm not,' the boy- Kiba? Yeah, probably Kiba- smirked.

'R-Raiku…?' Hinata managed, struggling to sit propped on her elbows.

'That's me! … An apologetic me, just so you know!' Raiku confirmed, keeping her eyes screwed shut, hands trying desperately to pull the ripped fabric of her sleeve back over to protect her wrist.

'Gairano, Raiku?' the woman she now recognised as their jounin leader asked in a low, unintentionally silky voice.

'Yes!' she winced faintly. _That_ wouldn't earn her any points, now that she'd apparently molested the Hyuuga heir on a public street.

Oh god.

What if this was the beginning of a lesbian sub-plot?

She paled, keeping her head low to hide it. She didn't want to be a lesbian! She preferred boys! Liked them as much as a twelve year old reasonably could, really!

Her sudden terror was fortunately misconstrued. 'I-I'm okay, R-Raiku,' Hinata said, making her wobbly way onto her feet. Raiku waited for the question: _So, how long have you been the natural soul mate of a light bulb_?

It never came.

'Y-You were… in a hurry?' Hinata asked tremulously, keeping her eyes averted.

Raiku shot up, hands coming up to grip her hair in panic. 'Oh no, Yamada-sensei!' she exclaimed, before looking to Hinata with a terrified expression. 'I'm sorry, I have to go! I'm sorry about before! Sorry!' she added again for good measure and sprinted away as fast as she could.

* * *

Hinata stared after her, still ironically shocked. Kurenai put a comforting hand on her shoulder, misinterpreting the expression. Hinata looked down at the hand over her heart.

_Why… Is my heart beating so fast?_

It was _actually_ because there was a great deal of highly unwanted electricity bouncing around her nervous system and making her body literally go haywire, but she hadn't ever been electrocuted before and so she couldn't really tell.

She flushed dark red and dropped her hand quickly.

She was going to try _really_ hard to avoid Gairano Raiku from now on.

* * *

Yamada-sensei was standing in the middle of the grassy training ground when she managed to catch up to them, the two boys of her team waiting for her expectantly. "Taking time out to smell the roses, speedy!?" Yamada barked, dark eyes glittering gleefully. "Fifty push-ups! And your nose better touch the ground each time, get me!?"

Raiku's shoulders slumped wearily and a groan escaped her as she hung her head.

Between the molestations and push-ups, being a shinobi was much harder than she'd anticipated.

* * *

A/N: Hinata is _not_ a lesbian in my story, so please don't kill me. However as much as I love Raiku, I love seeing her in awkward situations more.

Review and receive love.


	4. Subconsciously Uncooperative

Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Thanks to my beta, the ever tolerant Vanya Starwind, who deals with my colloquialisms and Australian spelling without kicking my ass. (I'd deserve it).

I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, storylines or affiliates.

* * *

It was one week and at least five hundred push-ups later that Yamada discovered Raiku simply could not access more than miniscule amounts of chakra.

"Speedy," he sighed wearily, head in his hands while he sat on a conveniently low tree branch. "Everybody has chakra. You just aren't very good with it, get me?"

Raiku sat cross-legged on the grass and stared up at him imploringly. 'Maybe I'm cursed?' she offered largely unhelpfully.

"You are not cursed!" Yamada retorted, though privately he was starting to agree. "You had to use the Shadow Clone technique to graduate after all- you've gotta have at least a little in there."

'I think it's shy.'

"Chakra is not-!" he broke off mid-sentence, hanging his head in frustration. Raiku looked up at him with endless willingness to help written in those massive blue eyes, and it only made the whole situation that much more awkward for him. It wasn't that she was being difficult and he knew that: she was simply too terrified of… everything, to be that difficult.

Raiku on the other hand, was pondering something else entirely.

I haven't seen Hinata lately, she worried to herself, tilting her head to look at the sky between branches. _Has she told her family I electrocuted her and are they coming to murder me now? Does her family think I molested her and __**are**__ they coming to murder me now!?_

"Speedy!" Yamada said as he snapped his fingers under her nose. "Come back speedy, we're not done here!" Raiku's head snapped back to let her look at him fearfully. That fearful expression was going to have to go. The girl was too highly strung, Yamada thought wearily.

"Look speedy, you can't rush chakra," he lied, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. "It's just one of those things. I'm gonna give you some techniques to practise at home, got me? Every day."

She nodded enthusiastically. There was a short silence of mutual understanding and exasperation, before Yamada came to his senses and composed himself. "Right," he said gruffly, clearing his throat. "Until you start getting better on that front, we're going to work on taijutsu."

Raiku knew she looked like a rabbit sitting directly in the path of a fox, but it was getting to be so automatic she was afraid her face would be stuck this way forever.

"Go and find Sullen and Shorty, we'll start with some partner work," Yamada instructed.

'You like the letter "s",' Raiku offered. Yamada inhaled to respond with orders of self-inflicted physical punishment, but when she flinched he relented. "Just go," he said wearily. She visibly (and appropriately) brightened, darting off.

"Getting soft in my old age," he muttered, crossing his arms across his chest.

Raiku jogged down across the grass to the beginning of the streets, setting her feet on concrete before she stopped to make a plan of action. Daisukenojo was probably at home with all six of his siblings, but he might refuse to help her look for Ryuu. She sighed, rubbing her neck. They made this so much harder than it should have been. Ryuu was more likely to complain rather than just refuse, so she decided to find him first.

When she arrived at his pleasantly plain home his pleasantly plain mother told her he'd gone out, presumably to meet his team. Raiku thanked her and went back to the gate, side-stepping an over-enthused rookie barrelling his way down the street. What did she know about Ryuu?

Almost nothing.

Well, that was better than actually knowing nothing, she guessed. And his house was sort of near the Hyuuga compound…

Should she apologise now? Or was it too late to apologise and they'd just thank her for making the assassination easier? Maybe she was blowing this out of proportion and-

Raiku paused mid-step, tilting her head. She frowned slightly under the mask, turning to look over her shoulder. Other than some friends milling absently next to a fence, there was no one.

She shrugged and continued on. She could've sworn she heard something…

* * *

'Remind me why we're hiding from spikes?' Kiba asked Hinata, grinning devilishly. Hinata went bright red. 'N-no reason!'

* * *

Ryuu, Ryuu… Raiku pondered, deep in thought as her feet subconsciously took her to the eating and shopping district. If I were-

'What do you want?' Ryuu asked bluntly. She shrieked, recoiling from the man suddenly existent on her left. 'When did you get there!?' she demanded.

Ryuu raised an eyebrow. 'You've been standing there saying my name for about twenty minutes now. In the end someone told me so that you'd stop scaring away business.'

She spun around, fixing a glowering storekeeper with a scandalised look. He made an impatient shooing motion.

'What do you want?' Ryuu repeated, rolling his eyes. She blinked, turning back to him. 'Yamada wants to practice taijutsu.'

'Gave up on your chakra?' he asked, lips twitching slightly.

'Y- No,' she coughed. Ryuu nodded knowingly. 'Sure.'

'We have to go find Daisukenojo anyway,' she muttered sullenly, crossing her arms across her chest. Ryuu grimaced. 'Let's get going. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can avoid his spastic family.'

'His family's not spastic!' Raiku retorted, giving him an eye roll of her own. 'You need to at least try to get along. You know, find some common ground?'

Ryuu changed the subject, making his way through the crowds with deceptive ease. 'I hear you jumped Hinata. I admire your bravery,' he smirked.

She gawked at him, weaving through the throng of people with considerably less grace and considerably more contortion. 'I didn't! It was an accident! IT WAS AN ACCIDENT.'

'Of course,' he said innocently as he pulled free of the majority and found himself almost at Daisukenojo's street with alarmingly convenient narrative styling.

'Which house is his?' he asked over his shoulder. From the crease of her eyes, Raiku was smiling. 'Follow the screams.'

As if on cue (which it most definitely was), an ear-splitting shriek assaulted them. From the third house on the left, which looked as though it had once been beautiful but now was simply sprawling. The walls had been obviously and hastily mended almost everywhere, standing in direct contrast to the curiously reverently tended garden.

A lanky red-haired child bit a lankier red-haired child on the ear. The lankier one was evidently the source of the screams. 'DAISUKE!' he- she- it shrieked.

'Shut up!' came the immediate bellow from the house. 'Excuse me,' Raiku began, immediately dismissed. 'Excuse me?' she tried again in vaguely incredulous tones.

There was what would have been a silence if it wasn't filled with the sounds of two people trying to ignore her.

'OI!' Ryuu barked, giving them a fierce glare. 'Get Daisukenojo!'

The shorter one screamed while the other ran inside. Ryuu sent her a smug look from the corner of a yellow eye. There was a suspicious series of crashes and yelps shortly before their short teammate came bursting out the door mid-yell. 'What the hell do you want R-,'

'Hey!' Raiku greeted cheerfully, eyes creasing to indicate a large smile. 'Yamada wants us up on the training field to practise taijutsu!'

He went red, caught in the middle of the beginning sentence of a tirade and now left with nowhere to go. She was just so damn… pathetic. It was like kicking a puppy. Granted it was a puppy that had made itself the most inconvenient hindrance alive by eating only every left shoe you owned, but it was a puppy nonetheless.

'Let's go,' he grumbled, slouching with what was dangerously close to petulance. She smiled at him again and he wished she'd stop. 'He gave up on your chakra then?' he asked. Raiku's smile vanished.

It wasn't her fault and she did know that. But whenever she tried to access any more than a tiny amount of chakra this damn pressure built up in her chest and in her arms, only ever getting worse. She narrowed her eyes and stuck her hands in her pockets, glowering at the ground. She would access her chakra.

She would.

"You took your damn time, speedy!"

A lovely greeting, courtesy of Yamada-sensei.

'I walked!' she protested. 'You never said I had to run!'

"It was implied, get me? Now," he said, rubbing his hands together in a business-like fashion. "You all know what taijutsu is, and you've all done some of the basics at school. You've got a fairly good idea, don't you?"

Raiku brightened. Daisukenojo and Ryuu just looked suspicious.

"Wrong!" Yamada roared, almost physically blowing Raiku away in the process. "You do NOT have a good idea of what taijutsu is! Today you are going to work, and then you're going to work, and then you're going to work some more, until I tell you that you're doing it right, get me!?"

Awestruck silence.

He inhaled sharply. "GET ME!?"

'Yes sensei!' the three responded in barely (and in one instance, not even slightly) concealed terror. "Good!" he said brightly. "Now, I'm going to give you some exercises for all three of you to work on your chakra with, and then I'm going to show you some moves. You're going to take it in turns to fight each other, all nice and friendly."

The punches were basic but apparently all three of them were doing them wrong. Their kicks left a lot to be desired but were apparently less feeble than their punches. Only Daisukenojo could do a perfect hold, but the other two got by. Satisfied that their 'feeble, womanly ways' would allow for a half decent fight, Yamada paired Ryuu and Daisukenojo and sat Raiku down with a chakra exercise, then promptly vanished to consult someone about something.

Probably her, Raiku supposed glumly, sitting cross-legged yet again and holding her hands in front of her. Her left hand was parallel to the ground, held loosely at the level of her chest with the palm facing upwards. The right hovered a small way above it, palm down. Both hands were, to her supreme discomfort, bare. Any closer and strings of electricity would connect the two, surging more powerfully the more she pressed.

She closed her eyes, and tried to bring the chakra to the surface. Daisukenojo and Ryuu had both managed a healthy glow and proceeded to compete for who could glow the brightest. She couldn't even manage a glimmer.

Establishing the connection wasn't the problem. She could feel her chakra flow, could even direct it where she wanted it to go. The problem was the pressure. The second she tried to manipulate it externally, or even to a certain degree internally, it felt like something was taking everything under the skin and forcing it together. The harder she tried, the heavier it got until it felt like there was something coiling under the skin of her chest preparing to strike.

She screwed her eyes even further shut to concentrate when Daisukenojo gave a distinctly unmanly yelp of pain. She was much faster than those two when it came to taijutsu, but the second they landed a hit it was all over for her. The chakra surged under her skin, her hands started to shake with the effort.

Yamada reached the edge of the field yet again, a lazy eyed man with strangely coloured hair accompanying him. The bickering of Hatake's team could be heard in the distance. Yamada didn't dislike the copy-nin, but he hated asking him for help. "The chakra's getting blocked somewhere," he said, folding his arms and staring at the concentrating genin critically. "It's unstable. I thought maybe…" he let it trail off, eyes indiscreetly flicking to the forehead protector covering Kakashi's eye. The shorter man gave him a mild look.

"There!" Yamada said, pointing at the flash of blue between Raiku's trembling fingers. "See?"

Kakashi tilted his head, but gave no other indication of interest.

"Can you help or not?" Yamada asked with carefully restrained impatience.

'She might be like Gai's student,' Kakashi pointed out, hands casually stuck in his pockets.

Yamada grimaced. "Don't say that."

'Give her more time. She might not be cut out to be a genin at all,' Kakashi suggested, turning back around and slouching away. Yamada's eye twitched. "I haven't failed a genin yet," he muttered darkly to the man's retreating back. He sighed. "Speedy, get up and trade with shorty.'

Daisukenojo reluctantly tugged free of Ryuu's headlock, stumbling back a few steps. 'Raiku, c'mon,' he said when there was no response.

Raiku felt the familiar vibrations of Yamada-sensei's footsteps growing closer, the impacts jolting her hands slightly. "Speedy, get up," he prompted, standing over her with his hands on his hips. "Rest time is over."

She felt sweat break out on her forehead as the pressure refused to alleviate. Yamada reached down for her, giving the distinct impression he was about to roll his eyes.

There was the sudden snap of something important and brief weightlessness. There was a ringing in her ears drowning out everything else and pain as something slammed into her back. Every part of her hurt. Dimly she heard yells, felt hands on her shoulders. Through wavering vision she raised a hand and was surprised to see it stained red, the shreds of her sleeves covering skin that fizzled and sparked. She tried to open her mouth to speak and something warm spilled out to spread over the mask, blocking her air supply and sticking to her face in a way that made her sick. The fingers of her other hand twitched uselessly at her side.

'Raiku! Raiku stay awake!'

'Yamada-sensei's hurt! There's blood everywhere, what the hell do I do?!'

'Get to the hospital and get a medic you damn moron!'

A vague suggestion of a face in front of her pierced the dark. 'Raiku? Raiku, don't black out you idiot!'

Raiku was many things, but tough wasn't one of them. Her head fell to the side, and her eyes closed.

Ryuu shook her again, cursing as something burnt his hands. 'Hurry up Hatori!' he shouted after Daisukenojo.

* * *

A/N: Read, review and don't forget to send me money! Oh, and constructive criticism and suggestions. In that order.


	5. Detonation and Drawbacks

Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Thanks again to my beta- my dialect hurts your brain, and I'm sorry.

I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, storylines or affiliates.

* * *

Raiku woke up by degrees, floating somewhere in the disembodied dark.

The smell was the first thing that pierced the fog. Antiseptic, soap and that strange, undefinable smell that pervades all hospitals came to her nose, instantly telling her where she was.

Shortly after that came touch. Rough fabric shifted lightly, grazing the pads of her fingers when they twitched reflexively. Dimly, she registered the foreign sensation of cool air on the backs of her hands.

After that came the pain. Deceptively mild, it wrapped itself around her limbs and weighed them down. Her brow creased, eyes screwing further shut.

A heart monitor beeped steadily, attached to the gauze covered patient prone on the sterile white hospital bed. Next to that peaceful scene, Raiku's heart monitor had an epileptic fit. It had lived a blameless life and now it was hooked up to a battery- it was less than pleased.

A suitably plain Gairano family member in the suitably plain white clothes of a medic leaned over from their post to adjust the volume on the monitor yet again, fully aware that Raiku was not in fact going into cardiac arrest. Other hand clenched firmly around a broom, they cast a wary eye at the door for Plots.

Raiku swallowed thickly, dry throat catching. She dragged a heavy eye open and the white ceiling swam into view as an indistinct blur. 'Raiku?' the Gairano woman asked quietly, leaning towards her from the chair questioningly. 'Raiku, can you hear me?'

She blinked sluggishly, turning her head and gasping at the sudden pain. 'Raiku,' the woman repeated, rising to her feet and placing a gloved hand on Raiku's gauze-bound forehead. 'Can you hear me?'

Raiku pulled the corners of her lips up into a weak smile, eyes half-closing in weariness. She nodded slightly. The woman smiled down at her warmly, the action making a plain face light up with sudden loveliness. 'Your father's worried about you, but he can't come in. You understand?'

Of course she did- it was far too melodramatic for a grief-stricken father to wait at her bedside, drawing too many parallels to his deceased wife. It prompted traumatised flashbacks and drama.

All the same, she thought as she nodded again, not trusting her dry and constricted throat to speak, it would have been nice to see him.

'I've been asked to tell you to keep your mouth shut,' the woman said with abrupt sternness, grey eyes flicking over Raiku's exposed face. 'And to give you this.'

Raiku sagged with relief at the sight of the black latex mask. 'We haven't been able to cover up your hair while you've been here,' the woman continued as she propped Raiku's head up to tie the back at the nape of her neck with brisk, efficient movements. 'So try to keep the boys away from your head.'

'I'll do my best,' she croaked painfully, wincing at the sound of her own voice. The woman nodded and gently set her head back down. 'Tell me where it hurts,' she instructed, setting her hands on her hips.

Raiku quirked a brow.

'Raiku,' the woman said warningly. Raiku's eye creased with her reflexive show of mirth. 'Just everywhere, Gairano-san,' she rasped wryly.

'My name's Mayuko,' the medic responded distractedly, lifting her safely covered arm and testing the elbow. 'You've accumulated some nasty injuries on your abdomen, not to mention you've strained... almost everything,' she criticised. 'You must have known the results of burning out your own chakra, Raiku. I don't want to see this become a habit,' she frowned.

'I didn- don't!' She jerked her arm, managing to flinch away feebly. Mayuko raised an eyebrow in return. 'You're just tired and strained, Raiku,' she sighed, rubbing her face wearily. 'You've got to be more careful. You can't channel chakra through vessels already completely preoccupied with...'

There it was- the trademark hesitation.

'Your condition,' she finished. Raiku coughed slightly, wincing. 'So I can't...?' she forced out, trailing off hopelessly.

'You can't,' Mayuko confirmed, eyes softening with sympathy. 'You may want to consider a different profession- especially after what you did to Yamada-san.'

'Yamada-sensei?' Raiku asked in alarm, eyes widening and trying to sit up. Mayuko put a hand out to her shoulder and pushed down firmly, gaze stern. 'You can see him when I say so and not before, understand?'

'What did I do to Yamada-sensei?' she persisted fearfully, breaths coming faster and irregular. 'Did I hurt him?'

_Did I kill him?_

She stamped on the thought. That sort of thing led to self-pity! That sort of thing led to Love Interests and tragic interludes!

'He's injured, but he's fine. Causing us all trouble,' she muttered darkly. 'And your teammates are waiting outside. One of them got a rather nasty shock- you _need_ to be more careful, Raiku!' she scolded.

Raiku flinched under her unyielding gaze. Mayuko continued on, relentlessly. 'You can't afford to let your guard down, and you know that! Bio-generated electricity is far too unpredictable for you to be taking these sorts of risks!'

_'Naruto_ gets to take as many risks as he _wants_,' Raiku muttered sullenly.

'_Naruto_ is a tragedy and heroism Plot, and you know that perfectly well,' Mayuko retorted. 'Now do you want me to let the boys in or not? Because if you want to see them, you're going to have to behave.'

'Yes,' Raiku said reluctantly, gripping the bars on each side of the bed to push herself into a sitting position, the muscles in her back and arms screaming in protest. Mayuko nodded and crossed the room to the door, sliding it open smoothly. 'You two- she's awake.'

Raiku heard hurried footsteps, before they came to an abrupt halt. 'What's the big idea!?' the indignant voice of Daisukenojo exclaimed, blocked by Mayuko's rigid figure.

'You can't go barging in there and riling her up, you hear me!?' Mayuko demanded. 'You're going to be on your best behaviour-,'

'We know the rules,' Ryuu's bored voice interjected. 'We've been to hospitals before.'

'You give me attitude again and I'll remove something needlessly,' the medic grumped. 'Fine, in you go. And don't touch anything!' she added hastily as they pushed past her.

'You!' Daisukenojo said, standing at the foot of her bed with a livid expression. 'You have any idea how expensive it is to get bloodstains out! What kind of a jerk are you!?'

This wasn't what Raiku had been expecting. She'd expected some sort of cheesy throwback to the 'finding some common ground' comment, with her or Yamada-sensei being the common ground, but she was after all a creature of satire.

And it was common knowledge peddlers of satire have no souls.

'A ...jerk?' she offered lamely, brow wrinkling in confusion. Daisukenojo glowered at her unimpressively. Ryuu glared at her from just behind him, arms folded across his chest. Blood coated his dark shirt and led up his neck to frame the left side of his jaw, a smear of blood under his eye. 'It's. Everywhere,' he gritted out. 'And you blew a _hole_ in Yamada-sensei. He only survived because there's so _much_ to blow a hole through!'

She stared at him, eyes wide.

'Don't give me that look,' he grumbled. 'I'm not falling for that.'

Her eyes shone tearfully. 'I... I hurt Yamada-sensei?'

'Yes!' Ryuu maintained, finding it difficult at this point to maintain eye contact. Freakishly blue massive things...

'And you _bled_ all _over_ both of us!' Daisukenojo sputtered, not to be outdone. 'What the hell were you trying to pull? You exploded!'

'I... do that,' she said awkwardly, clearing her throat.

'Learn to control your damn chakra, or we're replacing you with someone else!' he threatened, face almost as red as his hair. 'Get me?'

'You sound like Yamada-sensei,' Ryuu criticised. Daisukenojo flinched. 'Shut up, moron,' he muttered defensively, folding his arms across his chest. 'We've been waiting here for days, little blue idiot,' he added to Raiku. 'My mother's gonna _flip_ when she sees me.'

'You guys... didn't go home?' she asked falteringly. Daisukenojo gave her a scornful look. 'You're a member of our team, and Yamada-sensei's only in the next room! Like we were going to go home. _And_ the nurses won't let us use the shower.'

Raiku blanched, eyes dragging over to Ryuu.

'That's right,' he said in answer to her unspoken question, relishing the next word: '_days_.'

Raiku cringed in disgust, inching back. 'You... You can go home... Please go home,' she winced.

Ryuu's eye twitched. 'We wait here for ages and you tell us to go home!?'

'The reality of lovely gestures is lost on me when you haven't _bathed_! Go get clean! CLEAN!' she exclaimed, breaking into a cough as she finished. 'Go!' she croaked, waving a hand.

'Ooooh no. We're not going without a _hug_.' Daisukenojo said gleefully.

Raiku paled.

Ryuu gave him a nauseated look. 'That's right,' Daisukenojo maintained, expression gloating. 'You hate the touchy feely crap? Suck it up. If we have to smell bad, you have to smell bad.'

'Mercy,' she whimpered, holding her arms up defensively. She'd never been hugged in her life, and she wasn't going to start now.

Ryuu was catching on. 'Yeah, _teammate_,' he said darkly, smirking. They moved with deadly efficiency.

Her first thought was that it was warm.

Vaguely uncomfortable, too, since she was contorted at an impossible angle to avoid their skin. 'Deal with it!' Daisukenojo gloated from somewhere near her left ear.

Her second thought was that it was... nice.

Granted, Ryuu's elbow was digging into her bent leg and they smelled awful. _Awful_. But it was strangely safe, and completely new. Ryuu's breath fanned out against the skin of her neck, Daisukenojo's less lanky build keeping her in contented place. She was small and thus almost completely encompassed by their arms for a brief time, and as they pulled away she found herself missing the contact.

Not the smell though.

'And where the hell'd you even _get_ that mask?' Daisukenojo asked gruffly, clearing his throat.

'Dad brought it,' she lied. He nodded. 'Well,' he said after an awkward silence. 'Now that you're as rank as us, we're going. C'mon, Ryuu.'

He sauntered out the door, Ryuu close behind. 'You found some common ground?' she called after him.

'Yeah. We both hate you bleeding on us,' he deadpanned, sliding the door closed.

She sighed.

It was a start.

She shifted back down on the bed, checking to make sure the room was clear before timidly lifting the blanket and pulling up her shirt to expose her stomach. She stifled a surge of disappointment at the sight of the bandages. She should've known she wouldn't be able to see the extent of the damage.

She turned onto her side with a grunt of pain, towards the window.

It was going to be a long couple of weeks.

* * *

The days passed slowly. Agonisingly slowly. The ceiling didn't get any more interesting, and even the periodic visits of her suddenly hygienic teammates couldn't stave off the boredom for long. After a few weeks of intense observation and medical suspicion, Raiku decided to leave. It simply gave her too much time for introspection.

Introspection was dangerous territory.

She peered around the doorway to her room, legs shaking slightly with chemically induced adrenaline, the effects of her last IV treatment. She was going to get out of this room if it _killed her_.

She was a shinobi, she reminded herself. She could be stealthy.

She pulled the thin cotton hospital dressing gown tighter around her narrow shoulders and took a hesitant step onto the cold tiles, bare feet painfully conspicuous to her paranoid eyes.

She took another step, hunched in the middle of the hallway like some sort of hermit. Further down the corridor, another door creaked open. Slowly, an incredibly large man edged out of his room clad only in a hospital gown. Yamada held a finger to his lips, eyes darting around warily. She brightened at the sight of him, hand jerking up into a wave.

'Where do you think you're going Yamada-san?! Raiku-chan!?' the waspish voice of Mayuko demanded from behind her, down the hall.

The ground shook.

"Run for it, speedy!" Yamada shouted, taking off past her with a heavily gauze-wrapped chest. She yelped and ran after him, obeying the order out of habit rather than free will, sprinting down the sterile, sunlit hall and leaving a trail of partially melted footprints behind her, sparks flashing between the soles of her feet and the floor.

Mayuko stopped pursuing them with a curse, pulling out her standard issue Plot Prevent Radio, or PPR as they called them. 'I need a clean up at the hospital, code Raiku!' she snapped.

'Again?'

'Yes!'

"Don't you even think about overtaking me, kid!" he growled as she threatened to pass him, skidding around a corner. 'I'm sorry, but she knows where I live!' she panted, easily ducking under his arm and vanishing into the distance.

"Damnit!" he cursed, slowing at the entrance to the staff-room, head whipping around to stare at the direction Mayuko would presumably come from. No sight of her. Something occurred to him as someone tried in vain to edge past him into the room he currently blocked. "And where the _hell_ are my clothes!?" he barked to the intern, who reached roughly the level of his waist. She cowered fearfully, eyes bugging out of her head. The pale young woman stammered something unintelligible.

"What's wrong? Am I speaking your language, girl!?"

She covered her eyes with a shaking hand, pointing tremulously with the other.

There was a suspicious breeze. He looked down, slowly.

"Oh you are going to PAY FOR THIS GAIRANO!" his roar echoed after her. She lowered her head and increased her speed.

'I SAW NOTHING!' she screamed back. _I saw everything_, she thought to herself grimly as she leapt down the fire escape, the metal grille cutting into her bare feet. That particular image was going to take some work to get rid of. She landed on the ladder to the ground floor, emitting a small scream when it shot downwards sharply, metal moving under her fingers and catching on her gloves. She jolted with the impact and clambered down clumsily to the alley next to the hospital, yanking the caught threads free with an ominous ripping sound.

The wall to her left exploded.

The air was immediately thick with dust, rubble spraying out with the force of impact to slam into the wall on her other side with a series of cracks and thuds. She landed on her back hard, fabric ripping and skin tearing on the concrete and brick fragments.

Raiku struggled onto her hands, breaths sucking dust into her lungs and choking her. She spluttered weakly, trying to cover her mouth.

"So," Yamada gloated. "Thought you could get one over on me, did you now!?"

'Did you just destroy part of the hospital!? Just you just destroy a wall so you could catch me!? Are you insane?!' she exclaimed, horrified. He stood over her menacingly. "Don't you change the subject!"

'Subject? What subject!?'

"The subject of what we're going to do with you, get me!?"

She paled.

Given he was covered in brick dust and small pieces of debris, that seemed reasonable. The man had a hole in his chest primarily filled with gauze, and was still hardy enough to crash through walls.

Insane.

"You, speedy, have a lot of explaining to do," he said firmly, the expression on his face brooking no argument. "And you'd better start with the explosions."

'I ... explode sometimes?' she offered weakly from her position on the ground.

"Come on, speedy, I'll buy you some lunch and you can tell me all about it," he said, gesturing she should leave the alley first.

She nodded reluctantly and struggled to her feet, brushing off her hands with a wince. More scrapes. That combined with the burns on her abdomen was going to be an annoying few weeks. Raiku ducked under his arm and exited the alley onto the busy Konoha street, fresh air finally reaching her deprived lungs. She breathed in deeply, contented.

"Smell the roses later, kid," Yamada reminded her, patting her on the shoulder and jerking his thumb towards the left. "I know a great ramen place."

'No!' she said hastily, jerking back. 'I... I hate ramen!'

He gave her a deeply suspicious look.

She broke into a nervous sweat. She didn't want to meet Naruto and bond! Bonding was a class five risk!

"Suck it up," he said, sealing both their fates. "Talk as we walk." Raiku walked slowly down the street, hot summer sun warming the concrete to the point of singeing her feet slightly. Face downcast, she sighed heavily. 'What do you want to know?'

"For a start," he said slowly, waving at a woman hanging out her laundry. "I wanna know how you made yourself explode. I'm guessing," he said, giving her clothes a pointed look. "It's the same reason you're dressed like a monk in this sorta heat."

'Yeah,' she muttered. 'I'm ... different. My skin makes... electricity. Not my skin. But it comes out through my skin. My family said I can't channel chakra through my hands or out of my body properly while it's preoccupied with... the electricity. I can't touch anybody, or it hurts them really badly.'

"So the chakra flow burnt out trying to get past the electricity," he mused, eyes distant. "Solution seems pretty simple, speedy," he said slowly. "We've just gotta improvise with what you've got."

'Lightning skin?' she asked glumly.

"No," he said, cuffing her on the back of the head with a blow that almost sent her flying to the ground. "Don't feel sorry for yourself, that's stupid, you get me?"

'I get you,' she said, squaring her shoulders. He nodded approvingly. "We're going to pretend you're using lightning techniques. Think you can get your family to pretend they're family secrets?" he asked.

'I think I can manage that,' she said dryly.  
A plot scurried behind her, trying desperately to find a place for her in the world of the conflicted.

'We're good with secrets,' she added.

He grinned proudly. "We're gonna work on this as much as it takes. Who knows, maybe one day you'll be able to touch someone!"

She smiled brightly up at him, eyes creasing with happiness. 'I'd like that,' she said sweetly.

He smiled back down at her, the two caught in a moment of mutual understanding and secrecy. "I think this just might work out."

* * *

A/N: Read, review, give love.


	6. Gairano Assignment 1

Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Thankyou to my beta, Vanya Starwind- I don't deserve you. That being said, don't kill me.

I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, storylines or affiliates.

* * *

Several weeks after her impromptu escape and the lapsing of her teammates into a sort of uneasy peace, Raiku was called before the head of their family. Weeks of extra training and grueling physical punishment under the guise of preparation from Yamada had made even what seemed like an innocuous request highly suspicious, and she made her way to the official meeting point with her guard up and her paranoia in full force.

Raiku sat at the short desk, long spindly legs bent painfully to fit under it. She stared from her tiny chair up at the Gairano family patriarch, his brown eyes looking back without a shred of mercy visible within.

'Hey Dad,' she greeted.

'Raiku,' he nodded. He took a few casual steps towards the blackboard behind him, upon which was written a familiar list. The room they were in had no windows, a single steel door and almost painfully bright lighting to make everything look even more sparse than it already was. The room contained only the blackboard, the chair and desk that Raiku used now.

He extended the stainless steel pointer and gestured to the first item on the list. 'I think you've already forgotten several very important lessons during your short time as a shinobi. First duty of a Gairano is what?'

'"Use any means necessary to avoid the grasp of the Genematrix",' she supplied promptly.

His eyes glinted. 'Second duty?'

'"Stay away from that Naruto boy, we know trouble when we see it".'

'Good,' he said, jerking the pointer down to the third. 'Third duty?'

'"No brooding, but for in the compulsory brooding times of four until five every second weekday",' she answered.

'Fourth?'

'"Absolutely no shinobi Love Interests".'

'Fifth?'

'"Avoid all traumatic incidents and remain emotionally optimistic to avoid drama".'

'Sixth?'

Raiku opened her mouth, then paused. She frowned. 'There is no sixth duty.'

'There is now,' he said grimly, whipping the pointer up to the new role emblazoned on the blackboard. 'So the sixth duty is?'

'"Raiku",' she read, expression dubious. '"Keep your damn hands to yourself",' she sighed. 'Is that really necessary?'

'Clearly,' he said firmly. 'I got a message from Yamada-san today. You're going to be _training_ this power of yours. Does that seem like a bad idea to you? Because it seems like a bad idea to us.'

She gaped at him. 'It'll let me stay as a shinobi! It'll allow me to maybe not have to dress like a nun!'

'It'll make you an unbalanced character,' he warned disapprovingly. 'Think about it.'

'I honestly don't see how this could be a bad thing,' she said stubbornly.

'Think of Naruto learning how to harness his Kyuubi power,' he prompted, collapsing the pointer and sliding it into a pocket.

'That's hardly the same thing!' she protested. 'That'll make him undefeatable! This'll just make me cooler in the summer!'

He studied her with shrewd eyes. 'That's all you want to learn?' he asked suspiciously.

'Yes!' she said, exasperated.

There was a long silence as they glared at each other.

'You've got an assignment,' he said eventually, looking away. Raiku relished the small victory, her own electric blue gaze still smugly resting on his face. 'Where?'

'Downtown. Family member gone AWOL,' he said, scratching the side of his nose absently. She nodded sagely. That was the problem when a member of the family decided to seize their own Plot- the ability to see them meant they could pick and choose the end they wanted, which may entail unpleasant means. The most dramatic Plots usually involved civic destruction and deaths, which of course the Gairano family was billed for.

In fact, the Gairano family was billed for _everything_. The destruction caused by the sealing of the Kyuubi? Billed. The funeral expenses of the Yondaime that fell that day? Billed. The only reason civic utilities were kept so inexpensive was the fact that the Gairano family was paying for most of them to be repaired constantly.

Naruto was undoubtedly the biggest drain on their resources. The Gairano accountants cursed the day that blonde boy got it in his head to be a shinobi, but nonetheless paid for his education behind his back and found themselves receiving countless bills for ramen once Ichiraku found out their mailing address.

The ability to pay for it stemmed from the endless supply of low-brow missions they made it their jobs to receive. And while every time a high-class missing-nin came to town there were more Gairano casualties than anyone else, that was an acceptable risk.

The only thing the Gairano asked of the administrative offices of the Hokage was the ability and freedom to pursue their calling when it didn't interfere with their job- the maintaining of the separation from the Genematrix. Which meant if this particular family member gone AWOL refused to reject or withdraw from their plot there was the distinct possibility that they would be killed, their body dragged to an unmarked grave and their family left uninformed as to their fate.

To leave the family didn't mean the family left you.

'Her name's Mura,' her father said, waving a dismissive hand to give her permission to escape the tiny, constricting desk. 'Typical A-motive, she's gone for a longwinded and dramatic plot.'

A-motive: the most common motive of any sort of Gairano Plot-thief.

Love.

Being a Gairano meant a life free from torture and drama, but it also meant a life free of great loves and captivating Love Interests. Being a Gairano could be lonely, especially when the Gairano chose to be a shinobi. Being a Gairano shinobi meant maintaining a huge emotional distance, simply because the average shinobi could transmit Drama over distances up to a hundred miles.

Raiku nodded slowly, absorbing the information. 'We have a lock on the Interest she's hijacked?' she asked after a moment. He nodded. 'Jounin by the name of Shiranui Genma. He won't get in your way, so you're not at risk. Early days of the plot,' he added by way of explanation.

'What do you want me to do?' she asked. He shrugged. 'She's a good kid- she just got lonely. Convince her to come home.'

Raiku had never been asked to kill anyone, but it was only a matter of time. She didn't view it with contempt- she'd been raised to not really have strong views on anything. Views, as everyone knew, led to Stances on things, and those were far more trouble than they were worth.

A lifestyle this boring took endless work to maintain.

Instead Raiku had been raised to believe that as everyone died, killing was simply speeding up the natural process. Human life had value, of course, because to believe anything else led to Angst-Plots and Drama Rankings, but that value was a matter of perspective.

Everything was a matter of perspective.

'I've gotten you the address,' her father added, sliding a piece of paper over to her. 'Anyone asks, you tell them the truth: you're visiting a family member.'

'Got it.'

'You can stop by after training.'

'I'm training late,' she reminded him instantly. 'Extra training, remember?'

He rolled his eyes. 'After that, then.'

'What if it runs even later?'

'Make sure it doesn't.'

'But what if it _does_?'

'Then wake her up!' he exclaimed in frustration. 'She knows you're coming, and seeing it's you instead of one of our Equalisers should be a relief for her!'

"Equalisers". Private equivalents of ANBU, who skulked around assassinating unbalanced characters and stopping the great Plot from coming to fruition until Naruto was ready. Equalisers, the personal enforcers of the Gairano family who quietly and quickly dispatched the cronies of each Nemesis to allow a dramatic confrontation to take place with their Protagonist.

Also, coincidentally, the silent dispatchers of Plot Abusers.

'Alright,' she said reluctantly, tightening the band around her wrist. 'Anything else?'

'Drink plenty of water. Today's going to be very hot and the last thing you need is another stay in hospital,' he advised, stifling a grin and receiving a vile look in response. 'We can't afford to keep replacing walls.'

'Got it,' she grumbled unhappily, yanking her forehead protector on with a distinctly disgruntled air. It was useless to try and point out that Yamada had broken the wall and every Gairano hated useless statements.

It came from years of exposure to monologues.

'Now get out of here before I change my mind,' he said, flapping his hands at her dismissively. She raised an eyebrow but complied, yanking the heavy steel open with some difficulty and squeezing through the small gap out into the hall.

It really looked out of place, this steel door in the middle of a normal home. But secret entrances and secret rooms were for the interesting folk that inhabited the rest of Konoha. She padded down the simple wooden hall, stretching in the wide rays of sunshine entering through the windows. She paused to put on her shoes, before she stepped outside.

Into the smog.

She choked in a mixture of physical incapacitation and indignant shock, hand coming up to tug her mask into place. Marginally appeased, she looked around. Numerous queasy Gairano family members were going about their business with masks similar to hers on green faces. 'Plot,' someone wheezed in explanation as they passed, catching sight of her horrified look. 'Big one. Careless puncture, you know how it is.'

She shook her head in disbelief, pushing the gates open and skidding down the rock face. A few metres down she broke out of the smog and into fresh air, the effects lost on her through the mask. As usual, her waiting teammate got showered with pebbles.

More unusually, so did the other one.

'Why don't you people buy some stairs?' Ryuu asked indignantly, brushing dirt clods out of his hair. 'You've got a fortress up there but you couldn't install an access point?'

Raiku stared at him, legs still bent to absorb the impact of landing, hands out at her side to help her balance.

'Well?' he demanded.

'It's no use, man, she'll just laugh it off,' Daisukenojo pointed out, casting her a dirty look. She stared at them in mute surprise.

'Let's go,' Daisukenojo said to Ryuu, turning and slouching off in the direction of the training grounds. 'Sure,' Ryuu agreed mildly, following after him with considerably better posture.

For a moment she simply couldn't bring herself to react, caught under the spell of the surreal that seeing her two teammates getting along had cast over her. Then it shattered when a loud and to her ears, suddenly obnoxious voice called back for her. 'Coming!' she called instantly, running after the two boys. 'Why did you both come to get me!?' she yelled after them, swerving around a corner only to see their backs vanish around another.

There was a muffled and unintelligible response.

She cursed and sped up, quick steps bringing her level with them just as they reached the grassy path to the training fields. 'I didn't catch that?' she pressed when they gave no indication of wanting to respond.

'We wanted to make sure you hadn't killed yourself,' Ryuu repeated slowly, as though talking to a small child.

'Yeah. Those toasters are dangerous things,' Daisukenojo deadpanned.

Raiku flushed with anger. 'I made one mistake and suddenly I'm the accident magnet!?' she demanded.

'Yeah, that's about right,' Ryuu answered, casually kicking a rock towards a group of rookies practicing with kunai.

'You're the one who feels the pathological urge to pick on rookies!' she protested.

'On purpose,' he pointed out. 'I've never terrorised them by accident.'

'_One_ mistake,' she grumbled under her breath, shoving her hands in her pockets sullenly. '_One_.'

"Good _morning_, ladies!" Yamada grinned at them over his shoulder, facing the wide, blank expanse of the training field. "I trust you all slept well? Didn't brain yourself with a toaster or anything, speedy?"

'ONE! One mistake!'

"Good to hear it! Since our last taijutsu session was interrupted, not that I'm naming names, we're going to be continuing on that note today," he said cheerfully, easily brushing off her frustration. "For obvious reasons, Raiku's going to be one of the two fighting first."

Raiku cracked her knuckles menacingly. Daisukenojo swallowed, hard. Raiku wasn't strong, but she was fast as all hell and he just _knew-_

"Shorty, you'll be her partner, get me?" Yamada grinned.

Raiku shot an evil glare to her short teammate from the corner of her eye. She had a lovely suspicion this was going to be fun.

"Ryuu, I've got a jutsu I want you to practice until then, so over here. We'll leave the lovebirds to it," Yamada said, clapping Ryuu on the shoulder. Raiku noticed that to his credit, he didn't flinch upon impact, just nodded and walked to the edge of the field.

Raiku turned to Daisukenojo and assumed a look of truly malevolent intent, looking down at him as she stretched her fingers individually.

She stifled a surge of resentment as he simply scoffed at her. 'Bring it on,' he said, settling into an offensive stance and curling his fingers in provocation.

Raiku settled her feet, sliding them outwards to just outside of the width of her hips, bending her knees slightly.

There was a brief pause filled only with the wind rustling through the leaves of the tree surrounding them and the rustling of the long grass, before they both struck at once. She anticipated the low kick Daisukenojo used too often and slammed her foot downwards onto the side of his knee, immediately shifting her weight to his unprotected left side and sending her elbow towards his ear. Forced immediately onto the defensive, Daisukenojo blocked the blow with his hand and grabbed her sleeve, twisting her arm behind her back. Twisting violently in favour of the move, she used the momentum to yank him off-balance to the space immediately behind her.

He stumbled and recovered with admirable speed, cursing as Yamada called out, "one!" from somewhere behind them- one opportunity for the opponent to kill him.

Raiku danced back several steps, forcing her muscles to relax. She reminded herself someone of her build couldn't afford to rely on physical strength, and dragged her hands up in front of her. It went against what Iruka-sensei had taught them in drills, but Yamada would be watching her to make sure she was taking in his advice.

Daisukenojo's eyes flicked over her warily- she smiled freely under the mask, not bothering to alert him by creasing her eyes. That would teach him to mock her common sense.

Under the violently red hair, Daisukenojo was starting to sweat bullets. He _knew_ she was going to be trouble, he just _knew_ it. All that extra training Yamada-sensei was giving her… it had to be to make up for her lack of chakra with taijutsu! He maintained his shrewd expression, wanting nothing more than to just reach out and rip that mask off to try and catch wind of her expression. Anything to give him an inkling of what she was planning.

The sparring sessions went until one of them had accrued three losses. Ryuu was by far the most balanced, taking far longer for either side to win. Raiku had yet to have to fight Daisukenojo for more than an hour.

She feinted to her left and Daisukenojo instantly raised an arm defensively to the level of his chest, shifting to his right to intercept an attack that wasn't coming. She threw her own forearm up and hooked his wrist, pulling down with the left hand and sending the right flying towards his nose. He jerked his head to the side, her palm barely catching his ear. He grunted in pain, his captured arm bending to send an elbow into her chest. She choked, momentarily stunned, and grasped a handful of his hair.

He gave what to her sounded like an embarrassingly unmanly yelp, free hand coming up to grip her wrist so tightly she felt bone move against bone. Locked against each other, one each holding the arm of the other, they waiting for a moment, each trying to think of the quickest way free.

Raiku threw her head forward, forehead protector slamming into his own, unprotected head.

"Two!" she heard Yamada respond immediately as Daisukenojo fell backwards, almost dragging her to the ground as she suddenly took on half of his weight.

He groaned in pain, freeing her wrist to her profound relief and putting his hand on his forehead. The skin was already red darkening to purple- a sure sign of what was going to be an impressive bruise.

Raiku twisted her other arm free and stepped back, assuming her simple stance with slightly raised arms yet again.

He staggered, squinting at her. With a great deal of satisfaction, she grinned at him.

With a growl he lunged for her again.

The sun reached its peak and began to descend unheeded as the three continued to fight furiously, at one point forcibly pulled apart by Yamada when a casual spar turned into a personal vendetta. He watched them with a mixture of pride and amusement; he'd never believed in drills, finding them to encourage a standard response rather than what may have been more effective, but these three had responded to intense partner work with almost frightening rates of improvement. Daisukenojo was by far the strongest, built the heaviest despite being the closest to the ground, but Raiku was by far the fastest, a fact he no longer wondered about. Ryuu was the most balanced and held his own with admirable efficiency, possessing the greatest stamina. Though none of the three were good on their own, as yet only having untapped potential, they would one day make a truly formidable team.

The amusement stemmed from their absolutely vehement dislike of losing. Raiku's flexibility and speed kept the other two constantly frustrated, hands encountering air instead of flesh. Daisukenojo's advantage was the opposite, forcing the other two to give up their natural advantages to hit him as hard as they could by sheer refusal to lose. Ryuu simply found a weakness and ruthlessly pursued it with almost fanatical tenacity, only abandoning it when another was found.

They all, Yamada suspected, hated each other a little. However they refused to stop liking each other simply because it would give the others too much satisfaction to see them squirm, which left them with an interesting conundrum.

When the rays of the sun began to fade to red from brilliant gold, Yamada called for a halt. Exhausted, Daisukenojo and Ryuu dragged themselves away from each other. Raiku, who sat with her back to all three of them, let her head fall back to allow her to look at them upside down. "You all did well today!" Yamada congratulated them. Raiku felt a twinge of pride, only muted by the numerous bruises she sported. The burns on her stomach were throbbing ominously, her muscles screaming at her. To her weary eyes, Yamada's grin was frightening, a sign he was going to push them even harder tomorrow.

"You've all earned yourself some early leave- we go on a mission tomorrow, so you may as well get some rest anyway, get me?"

Raiku shuddered as the memory of the last mission surfaced. The remembered phantom drool cooled her forehead under the protector slightly.

"Go on, you two," Yamada addressed the boys. "Speedy's gotta stay for extra training."

They looked over at her with stares of demonic glee.

She shot them a poisonous, upside-down look.

'See you later, Yamada-sensei,' Daisukenojo nodded, putting his hands in his pockets and making his way back down the hill to the village with a pronounced limp.

Raiku noted the limp with savage pride. She'd made him pay for getting away early in advance. 'Bye Yamada-sensei, Raiku,' Ryuu nodded to them courteously, managing to convey a sense of boredom even as he turned his back and left.

He could _exude_ it. It was a gift she suspected he'd cultivated.

"Well," Yamada said, rubbing his hands together briskly once the other two were safely gone, resembling the devil himself in the red light of the setting sun. "Let's get to work."

Raiku nodded shortly, standing and pulling her gloves off, dropping them onto the grass. She peeled her mask off her face and left it gathered around her neck, slipping her forehead protector off and rolling up her sleeves.

In the rapidly fading light, her skin glowed.

Yamada's face was set into uncharacteristic seriousness. "You got it, speedy?"

She looked down at her hands, tilting her head slightly as she watched the glow steadily grow brighter, coalescing into streaks of lightning dancing over her skin. 'Yes,' she responded simply.

He nodded. "Push it down."

She pushed her shoes off and kicked them to a few feet away, sliding her leg bindings up to her knees. The electricity immediately started to crackle to life, scorching the ground around her toes.

"Does it hurt?" he asked, eyeing it. It took a lot of getting used to.

'No,' she said mildly, the faintly cheerful expression affixed to her face as always. It never hurt. She felt the truth of it pushing at the back of her mind and shoved it further away.

"Alright, speedy," Yamada said quietly, stern gaze meeting hers head on. "No screw ups, get me?"

Raiku nodded.

"Good. Now," he said, turning to his left and eyeing a particularly provocative tree. "That one."

Raiku threw her hands out in front of her, releasing as much force as she dared in one blow. The force of it screamed through her arms and exploded into life as a bolt of electricity easily the width of herself shrieked through the air with blinding speed. The tree cracked open and vanished, splinters rending the air and settling into a blast radius of several metres.

Raiku let her arms fall to her sides, crackling faintly. Yamada looked at her from the corner of his eye, still facing the remains of the tree. "Anything?"

She looked down at her hands, still glowing. 'No,' she said eventually.

He nodded, more to himself than her it seemed. 'It's not throwing it out,' she explained after a moment's thought. 'It feels more like letting it out.'

It had taken weeks to get to the point where she could describe even that, she reflected. Then she caught the pity and yanked it up short, mustering a sheepish smile and scratching the back of her head. 'What do you think, Yamada-sensei?'

"Look, speedy," he said slowly, staring into the distance and deep in thought. "As far as I can see you're always producing it, get me?"

She nodded.

"So," he continued. "When you're _not_ doing that-," he gestured to the tree at that point, "it's because you're telling yourself not to."

She nodded again, steadily drawing her own conclusions. "The ability to tell yourself not to let it out to your skin at all is gonna be something you do on your own, get me?" Yamada said to her after a moment of silence. "But the training should help. Teaching you how to use it better might teach you how to control it more in general."

He waited for her response.

She smiled up at him brightly, and not for the first time he noticed the faint blue glow from behind her teeth as electricity painted the roof of her mouth. 'Thanks Yamada-sensei, but I think I'll try it on my own,' she said cheerfully. That was a lie, it just wasn't wise for her to become too good at anything.

To her profound relief he seemed to accept the answer. "Well speedy, get a good night's sleep," he said, stretching his arms over his head and making himself momentarily taller than the rest of the forest in the process. "Like I said- mission tomorrow."

'Got it!' she said happily, giving him a proud, two-fingered salute. He rolled his eyes at her. Raiku started to pull on her various coverings as he walked away, already, fishing with one hand in a pocket for the Plot Abuser's address. She'd get as much sleep as she can, but for now she had a job to do.

Ruefully, she wondered if Naruto ever had this many things to take care of.

* * *

A/N: Read and review.


	7. Gairano Assignment Complete

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: You know who I'm going to thank- the grossly overworking Vanya Starwind, (I'll try to keep it to one chapter a day ((I'm lying)).

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

Raiku made her way downtown with easily feigned nonchalance- the freedom granted by a secure alibi infiltrating her natural wariness. The artificial light cast the streets in warm yellow glow, interrupted by deep shadows that other shinobi periodically occupied. The still busy streets were filled with mostly chuunin relieved from duty with the setting of the sun and civilians hoping to catch their attention, the smells of cooking and sounds of easy conversation permeating the air.

Distantly, Raiku hoped this Mura would come home willingly. It was a nice night, and the summer heat was split by a pleasant breeze for the first time in weeks. To end a nice night on a sour note like that would be… regrettable.

She fished around in her pocket for the address, pulling the wrinkled piece of paper out and double-checking the contents. Her eyes flicked to the apartment building across the street from her, dotted with advertisements and vague remnants of graffiti. She tilted her head curiously, the paper crushed into her pocket once more. This was what she'd expected in terms of budget, but not location. It was rare for a Gairano, even a Plot Abuser, to choose an area so densely populated. It made them nervous.

Someone brushed past her impatiently, carrying a laden tray towards a table. She began to apologise out of reflex, and realised it would draw more attention to her than not doing so. She looked down at herself. A black latex mask stretched up from the ANBU style shirt she'd worn most of her life, her arms covered with sleeves of the same colour sewn on as an afterthought. Her hands were gloved, her forehead covered with the Konoha protector. Her dark grey pants reached her knees and the rest of her was covered in identical black fabric- she cringed in sudden understanding.

She looked like an ANBU.

And if there was one thing ANBU certainly _didn't_ do, it was stand in the middle of a downtown street and apologise.

She squared her shoulders, resolved to buy some red socks or _something _colourful, and crossed the street towards the intercom. Her target was situated on the third floor, made obvious by the glaring lack of a label on the corresponding button- no one wanted the Equalisers to have an easy job. No one liked Equalisers, especially not the Equalisers themselves. She assumed a worried expression, shoulders slumping, adopting the persona of a stressed shinobi. A stressed shinobi who had locked themselves out- frying the lock in the middle of a public street would be an incredibly _bad_ idea. That and there was always the chance the lock would melt closed.

It took twenty minutes for an opportunity to present itself, in the form of a woman whose determined if unsteady path painted a line of intent to the apartment complex door. 'Excuse me,' she said cheerfully to the woman in question, who was currently struggling to juggle both groceries and her keys, recognising the skewed path for what it was. 'Would you like some help, miss?'

Hidden behind brown grocery bags, there was an audible pause. 'Sure,' the woman said eventually, fingers straining to hold out her keys without dropping anything.

Raiku accepted them and quickly unlocked the door, stepping inside casually to hold it open for her. 'Are you sure you wouldn't like me to carry anything for you?'

'No, thank you,' the woman said with strangely reluctant gratitude.

_Maybe a shirt that says "genin" on it_, Raiku thought wearily. _Maybe that'll do the trick._

'Have a nice night then!' she said instead, creasing her eyes happily and moving towards the door. The woman awkwardly made her way up the steps, failing to notice Raiku simply stepping under the second flight of stairs as the door closed. Raiku waited until both the rustling of paper and the footsteps disappeared with the click of a lock and some mild cursing, leaning out to look up the stairwell. There were six floors in total, and no sight or sound of a tenant at the current.

She padded casually up the stairs, frame purposefully relaxed. Walk, she knew. Walk, not run. If you look like you have the right to be there, people will assume you do, as time had proven for her.

As she rounded the corner to the stairs leading to the third floor, she absently tugged a glove off with her teeth, flexing her bare fingers in the warm air in preparation. She reached the top and scanned the doors, quickly finding the one she sought and approaching with a deceptive sense of entitlement. She cast a casual glance in either direction in front of the plain wooden door, reaching out with to press bar fingertips to the door. Metal was a superior conductor to wood, and after a moment, there was a distinct crack from within the frame.

Whistling quietly, she tugged the door open and slid it closed behind her, leaving her in the dim apartment. The open windows overlooking the street allowed the light of the streetlamps and storefronts to filter into the dark, illuminating a sparse apartment.

Raiku raised an eyebrow, dispassionate eyes scanning over the simple furniture. There were very few personal touches, she noted as she once again pulled on her glove, sparks leaping unhappily from the skin in protest. She absently traced a gloved finger over a framed picture sitting on top of a bookshelf as she passed, the photo within one of a handsome brunette man in his twenties, chewing on a senbon with an arm slung casually over the shoulder of a lovely woman with solemn grey eyes.

She supposed that was Shiranui Genma in the photo there with Gairano Mura.

Her eyes took in the glowing red display of a digital clock as she settled into a vaguely uncomfortable chair facing the door. 6 o'clock came and went as she sat there in the dark, purposefully not thinking about anything.

She hated A-Motives.

She didn't know why, but something about them grabbed something in her chest and twisted painfully, leaving her with a strange, foreign sensation in the aftermath.

The clock told her it was nearing 7 o'clock when Gairano Mura finally came home. She was still laughing as she stumbled in through the door, slipping her shoes off so quickly she almost stumbled as she tried to do both that and find the light switch at the same time. Her face was lit up with joy until the exact moment she saw Raiku sitting directly across from her.

The happiness bled from her face.

Raiku creased her eyes in a cheerful, friendly manner, gesturing with a black clad hand to a seat placed near her own. 'Hello Mura-san. May I speak with you?'

Mura stared at her, face ashen and hands beginning to shake. Raiku tilted her head in question, eyes still creased into that fake smile. 'Please, sit,' she repeated, as though it were her home and Mura a reluctant guest. It may as well have been true: as the current representative of the Gairano family and all the unpleasant extensions it involved itself with, Raiku was by far the senior in power in the situation.

Shaking, movements jerky, Mura made her way over to the chair in question, hands smoothing her pants in what seemed to be a nervous habit. Raiku allowed her eyes to flick over the older woman's slightly rumpled clothes. She looked nice, she reflected, in a dark grey shirt and simple skirt. Elegant, even.

'Mura-san, our family has sent me to see you,' she said pleasantly, folding her hands in her lap. Mura nodded weakly, eyes wide and unblinking. 'They want to know why you've broken the rules.'

The woman stared at her mutely, and something in her eyes pleaded with Raiku. But Raiku was only twelve, and hadn't experienced anything that Mura had betrayed the family for. Her blue eyes stared at her with only mild, dispassionate curiosity.

'Mura-san?' Raiku prompted gently, seeing she had no intention of answering. The other woman jerked almost violently, shaken out of some internal thought process. 'I just…' she began falteringly, then stopped. To Raiku's supreme horror, her eyes grew shiny with tears.

Raiku felt there was a point of clarification necessary here. 'Mura-san, I am not an Equaliser,' she said quietly. 'I'm just here to ask you some questions.'

Mura cracked under the pressure of her own relief. 'Thank you,' she whispered, burying her face in her hands. 'Thank you.'

Raiku didn't feel that not killing someone was something to be thanked for. She cleared her throat awkwardly, wanting to speed things along. She'd been sent on jobs exactly like this for people closer to her own age many times before- this was evidently some kind of test, and she didn't intend to fail.

'Mura-san, please answer my question.'

Mura nodded into her hands, wiping her eyes roughly. 'You'll get sick of it,' she forced out, voice thick with some emotion Raiku didn't recognise. 'You'll get sick of denying everything. You'll get sick of watching the people _you_ want to be with thrown into Plots and coming out so damn _happy_.'

She looked up at last, eyes red. 'And you know what?' she asked, perilously close to tears again already. 'Some people don't _get_ Plots. And they spend all their lives _looking_ for them and _looking_ for what we spend all our time avoiding! They know they're missing something and they try and fill the gap with everything that doesn't fit!'

Raiku tilted her head in the opposite direction. 'You're referring to Shiranui Genma?'

Mura flinched. Raiku wondered if it was the sound of that man's name coming from a representative of Gairano.

'Yes,' she managed eventually, fingers twisting themselves in her lap. The only response she could read on Raiku's face was the sudden blink. 'You seized a Plot in order to become the Love Interest of Shiranui Genma?' the girl reiterated.

'Yes,' Mura repeated quietly.

'You did this out of… compassion?' Raiku pressed on with casual insensitivity.

'Yes.'

Raiku nodded. 'I see.' She leant forward, brilliant eyes searching Mura's intently. 'You know you have to come home,' she said with quiet earnest. 'You know we can't let you twist things.'

'Please,' Mura asked. 'Please just let me have this one thing. He deserves it!' she added in sudden, unexpected conviction.

'That isn't for you to decide,' Raiku said simply. 'If you come home, he won't miss you. If you don't, he'll miss a loved one when the Equalisers come after you.'

'Isn't it better to have loved and lost?' Mura offered her, but Raiku recognised the signs of a woman about to crack.

'He can't miss what he's never had,' she responded.

'That's a lie!' Mura spat, throwing an arm out in passionate gesticulation. 'You know that's a lie! You just spend your life searching for anything that'll take the place of what you miss!'

'Mura-san, you have to come home,' Raiku said firmly, easily evading the flailing arm. 'This won't help anything.'

'If you take me away he'll never find someone else!' Mura exclaimed, voice pleading with her.

'That's not your responsibility. Nor is it our responsibility,' Raiku explained. 'Mura-san, you must come home with me or you will die.'

Mura flinched again.

Ruthlessly Raiku pressed on. 'You have stolen a Plot in order to fulfill your own goals. What he will experience is not love. It's narrative obligation.'

Abruptly, her eyes creased to indicate an inappropriately sweet smile. 'So shall we go home, Mura-san?'

The woman just looked at her for a while, and Raiku found herself with the opportunity to actually observe the fight going out of someone's eyes.

'I need time to pack,' Mura said after the extended silence, dropping her gaze.

Raiku nodded, standing in a movement so sudden Mura almost threw herself back onto the ground, chair and all. 'I'll see you at home, Mura-san! You should return by midnight, so you have plenty of time to notify the family,' Raiku said with newfound cheer, dusting off her hands. 'You will be reimbursed for the lock,' she added as she padded towards the door. Her stomach rumbled only once she had reached the safety of the stairwell, reminding her in no uncertain terms that it was still in control around here and it wanted a raise.

She sighed, stretching out the kinks in her neck and rubbing the back of her head awkwardly. She hated A-Motives.

They were always so earnest.

Three flights of stairs later she pushed open the door, once again finding herself in the middle of a busy downtown street. As laughter reached her ears, she looked around for somewhere to eat. But genin weren't exactly sources of wealth, and she found herself grimacing in pain at the sight of the prices within immediate visual range.

It was starting to look like it was instant miso again.

She hung her head sheepishly. It had been a tragically interesting couple of weeks, she should at least be able to eat out. But no, nothing like that for Raiku.

She put her hands in her pockets to dissuade enterprising pickpockets and made her way through the crowds and bustling streets, mourning the inaccessibility of the delicious food surrounding her.

If she noticed a man with brown hair and a senbon hanging from his lips sitting alone and waiting for someone for someone who wasn't coming, she gave no indication. Raiku just kept to her path out of the busy downtown, and wondered why there was something at the back of her mind that stung.


	8. Beauty and Scorch Marks

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Do you... really need to ask who I'm going to thank? By this point? It's pretty damn obvious.

(Vanya).

Second chapter in a single day... You're brilliant.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

The 'mission' was to the hidden village of the Sand, and Raiku felt her heart break. It made itself known through a pained whimper. Sand? In these clothes? These clothes… in the desert? Sand and electricity at once? There were far too many things that were already wrong with this mission.

"That's right, ladies- _Sand_,' Yamada said with an unholy abundance of glee. "We're going to be escorting this young lady-," he gestured, but she was standing behind him and they couldn't see any part of her, "back home. Get me?"

'Can I stay home?' Raiku asked instantly, looking up at him imploringly. His face darkened.

"No!"

She strived to fabricate an excuse. 'I… I need to take care of my father!' she lied desperately. 'He's… sick.'

She received three disbelieving looks. "It's gonna take more than illness to finish off _your_ father, speedy."

'I have my period?' she threw out as a last resort, cringing.

This time, she received two horrified looks and one smug one. "Really?" Yamada asked, smirking.

She broke into cold sweat. 'Ye-es?' she offered slowly.

"Prove it."

She choked on air, stumbling back a step. 'What!?'

Ryuuu and Daisukenojo transferred their horrified looks to Yamada. He was unmoved. "You heard me, speedy. Prove it." He folded his arms over his chest, squaring his shoulders and looking down at her with an uncompromising expression.

There was no greater humiliation than being asked to prove your own period. She fidgeted on the spot, shifting her weight from foot to foot. 'I… I can't,' she managed, unable to maintain eye contact. Even if she had had her period, all the blood was rushing to her head now anyway, making proof impossible.

"I knew it!" Yamada crowed. "Ichitaka-san, you're a woman. Does she look like she's got it?"

A blonde head peered around Yamada's gargantuan frame, hazel eyes studying Raiku critically. 'No. Skinny girl like that may not get it for a few more years.'

Raiku went scarlet.

"Few years? That's normal for a kunoich-,"

'Can we not discuss my bodily functions?' Raiku offered from behind her hand, currently firmly placed over her eyes.

"Well we've gotta talk about _something_ on the way there, don't we speedy?"

'Why don't we talk about your wife? Isn't she due soon?' she offered with a wince.

Two vile glares instantly snapped back to her.

Yamada's face was split with a glowing smile, creasing the unpleasant scars around his lips in a deeply unsettling way. "Yeah! Next month, actually!" he said proudly. He turned smartly on his heel, enthused strides carrying him quickly past their mission subject, still talking animatedly about his wife.

His wife was not beautiful.

But he always said she was.

Usually for hours on end, which was the problem.

'Good going, _pal_,' Daisukenojo gritted out, clapping her on the shoulder harder than was strictly necessary.

'Yeah, _Raiku_,' Ryuu growled, falling into place on her other side. Ichitaka sent them a curious look over her shoulder, and Raiku sent her a nervous smile in response. Ichitaka seemed less than reassured at the sight of the three of them. Understandable, really. Raiku's frame was stick thin, her painful lack of weight only emphasised by the dark clothes she wore, her mop of brown spiky hair making her look somewhat, in her opinion, like a spastic broom. Ryuu's handsome face resembled a statue for its stillness and aloof air, his black knee-length shorts and long sleeved brown shirt setting off his yellow eyes well, but unable to hide his rather extreme youth and slight build. Daisukenojo's vibrant red hair only clashed with his white singlet shirt and dark green shorts, arms clad in numerous wristbands and making him look even younger than he was.

They were all shorter than the Sand citizen.

They didn't look like shinobi.

On the other hand, Ichitaka was the most beautiful woman Raiku had ever seen. Her hair was almost white blonde and contrasted with her hazel eyes, framed by long, sooty eyelashes. Raiku stared up at her with a mixture of adoration and embarrassment lingering from their earlier, indirect exchange.

'Hi?' she offered in an embarrassing squeak.

Wordlessly, Ichitaka turned back around.

Raiku slumped, receiving a pat on the back for her troubles. 'We've gotta act like proper genin when we get outta the gates, got it?' Daisukenojo said gruffly, noticing the defeated line of her shoulders. She nodded sadly. 'Got it.'

He nodded and walked a little ahead of her, Ryuu following after almost subconsciously. 'You still sound like Yamada-sensei,' she heard him mutter, but couldn't make out Daisukenojo's vehement response. She straightened with some effort as her two teammates split to stand on either side of Ichitaka at a respectable distance, assuming her own defensive position at the rear. The gates of Konoha loomed up over them momentarily as they crossed the bridge onto the tree-lined dirt road, before they experienced the sudden rush of freedom leaving their hometown provided.

To Raiku, it felt somewhat like what she imagined standing naked in public. In every shadow, a Plot loomed threateningly, taunting her with images of immaculately styled hair and beauty that required no maintenance. The ancient trees lining their path served only to punctuate the stark contrast between their path and the earthy Gairano compound, where sunlight was perpetually filtered by the fading smog of Plots and came out as a strange grey colour, rather than the vibrant gold pouring over every inch of the road and Raiku's pale features.

Raiku slipped her hands into her pockets, forcing herself to relax. It wouldn't be so bad out here, she hoped quietly, enjoying the fresh breeze pushing her hair out of her face.

She immediately tensed again, eyes widening in shock at her own stupidity. Her hair! How could she forget her hair!? Hair suddenly losing pigment wasn't something they weren't going to notice!

She looked back at the shrinking figure of Konoha with panic in her eyes. They were walking, but walking quickly enough that in the short time since their departure returning to retrieve that supply was impossible. She forced her face back to face the direction they were travelling in, eyes flicking blindly over uneven road and patchy grass. There was no need to panic. She'd just have to improvise.

Improvise with what? Charcoal!?

She blinked.

Charcoal might do.

Her eyes narrowed shrewdly. Charcoal may be too dark. Mud was too thick. Ink? Ink! Ink was _perfect_.

Her sly gaze flitted over the three members of their party that were still visible to her. How hard could it be to steal ink?

It couldn't be that difficult, surely.

But they had a long day of travelling ahead of them, so it would have to wait. She'd use the ink if they failed to reach Sand before it was time for her hair to be dyed…

Less than a week.

She lightly touched a fist to her open palm in a gesture of determination. She could do this. She could put up with the sand, and the heat, without unexpectedly revitalising the Sand glass industry or dying of dehydration.

She could do this.

* * *

It was an hour shy of nightfall when she was at last allowed to collapse in a conveniently placed clearing, fenced in on one side by a sheer rock face. Collapse she did, rather spectacularly, slumping to the ground in a tangle of limbs that should have been physically impossible.

Yamada looked up from the kindling he was piling in preparation for sundown, shaking his head at her. "Don't get too comfortable, speedy- you three are going to be working, get me?" he asked.

She twitched in response.

"You're all going to be practicing chakra manipulation," he added as Daisukenojo and Ryuu escorted Ichitaka into sight, seating themselves with considerably more grace than their overheated teammate. Ryuu raised an eyebrow, settling back on his hands.

Yamada jerked his head at the rock face, which recognised a hint when it saw one and released a few stray pebbles to ricochet off particularly sharp edges ominously. "You're all going to be climbing that."

Raiku brightened from under her arm. Rock-climbing she could do.

"With chakra!"

She bit her lip, crossing her eyes with the effort it took to not swear. "Yes," Yamada continued heedlessly, taking some sort of feral joy from their displeasure, as he always did, "you're going to learn how to use chakra in a way that's actually useful!"

Ryuu's eyebrow remained raised, and Raiku could just tell what he was thinking. The jutsu that allowed him to pull the air from someone's lungs was useful. The jutsu that made a copy of himself from wind was useful. Walking up a cliff face held only by the application of chakra did not seem useful, but did seem dangerous.

She bit the skin between thumb and first finger worriedly, unfolding herself into a seated position by what would in a few hours be the fire. Up a cliff? Up a cliff… with chakra? She tried to hold back the look of terror in front of Ichitaka, wishing for nothing more than the beautiful woman's absence. Falling to her death was bad enough, but with her luck she'd fall into an embarrassing pose and be immortalised that way in both Konoha _and_ Sand.

Ryuu got to his feet, looking at Yamada with a blank expression. 'How do I do this, Yamada-sensei?' he asked. If Raiku didn't see the occasional flash of rage, she'd think him a sociopath. He loved the necessary, and almost nothing else.

That and she'd seen him blush in the arms of his mother once. That alone had convinced her he wasn't the cold boy he strived so hard to resemble.

"Concentrate your chakra onto your feet, and walk up."

Their leader seemed to remember something as Ryuu took a step towards the stone. "Most beginners find it easier to run, and maintain it as long as they can, get me? Slower is harder, and this sorta thing comes with practice."

'I get you,' Ryuu said, tilting his head back to drag his eyes up the wall. Daisukenojo watched him like a hawk, and Raiku found herself doing the same. Ryuu's chakra control was by far the best out of the three of them even with Daisukenojo's natural advantages bringing him up to speed, and thus if he could at least get close on the first try then _surely_…

Ryuu took several steps back, before sprinting forward and up the perfectly vertical cliff face. Raiku gaped up at him, wide eyes giving away what the mask tried so valiantly to hide. Ryuu made it successfully up roughly ten metres before his feet lost whatever had held them there and sent him plummeting back towards the ground.

Raiku gave an involuntary yelp of concern when he hit the ground, hands instantly coming up to cover her mouth. Yamada smirked knowingly, settling back next to Ichitaka to watch the show. After a moment in which he simply couldn't breathe, Ryuu took a gasping breath and sat up, arm twisting to try and rub his back.

'I … can do that better,' he said after a while, wheezing only slightly. He got to his feet.

"I'd better see you land properly, get me?" Yamada demanded, but his glinting eyes belied the casual playfulness within. "We're shinobi, not rocks."

Raiku risked a glance at him out of the corner of her eye.

"You two, don't make him do all the work," Yamada ordered.

With considerable reluctance, she got to her feet.

"And… go!"

Instinctively she responded to the command, sprinting towards the cliff as quickly as she could, planting an impossibly fast foot onto the stone and launching herself up it, forgetting in her haste to attach any chakra to her feet at all.

Ryuu watched with mild surprise as she made it far higher than he had, shortly before she began to fall with a petrified shriek.

"I said use your chakra, speedy!" Yamada bellowed as she fell downwards, desperately twisting to try and land on her feet. "Don't think I didn't notice that you're cheating!"

Raiku managed to land on her feet, knees bending to absorb the impact automatically with a quiet crack. She bit her lip and clutched her shin, little white dots appearing in front of her eyes. 'Not… fun,' she managed. Daisukenojo craned his neck to look up at the distant top of the cliff.

He didn't end up saying anything, but chose to run forward without comment.

Yamada settled back again, moving only to shout both advice and reprimand. By the time nightfall actually came about, the path Raiku had taken to the cliff was burnt into the soil and grass forever, blackened footsteps leading up past the scuff marks of the others and her teammates pointedly not asking her why.

It was her cue to tell them on her own, and she recognised that. But being too close to her teammates would inevitably lead to betrayal. The small part of her mind dedicated solely to her efficiency as a shinobi pointed out that being aware of strengths and weaknesses would allow them to better work with her, ruthlessly quashed by the significantly bigger part dedicated solely to being a Gairano.

Attaching chakra to the soles of her shoes was less effective than simply creating a web underneath her foot, but for the moment it was as much as she could manage and it allowed her to stay on the cliff without falling, which was really all she wanted. Ryuu had managed to walk to the top of the cliff and tell them how far they still were from the desert- far- before walking down, while Daisukenojo managed to run up and achieve the same end.

Now they sat around the cheerful if slightly small fire, watching the pot bubbling over it with conspicuously ravenous interest. Ichitaka had watched the afternoon's entertainment with some interest, but evidently found the strange dynamic even more fascinating.

Raiku watched her analyse them with some curiosity. The older woman's eyes lingered on Ryuu for a few seconds longer than they had on her and for an even briefer period on Daisukenojo. The silence was punctuated by the crackling of the fire and the distinct sound of four people fixedly _not_ talking about something.

Raiku cleared her throat awkwardly.

"So," Yamada said brightly, making three well-conditioned genin flinch. "You mentioned stunted puberty for girls as thin as Raiku?"

Raiku, for the second time that day, choked.

Ichitaka nodded, and if she was taken aback at the topic she didn't give any indication. 'Girls who suffer from being underweight often find themselves developing late- if at all.'

From the beady stare Yamada was giving her, Raiku was going to be given extra stew tonight. She sank her head into her hands, elbows resting on crossed legs. A surprised sound issued from Ichitaka. 'Raiku-chan, you don't need to be embarrassed. Hasn't your mother told you about this sort of thing?' she inquired.

'My mother's dead,' Raiku said with awkward cheer.

Ichitaka looked taken aback. 'I'm sorry to hear that. Was she also a shinobi?'

Raiku looked up, brow wrinkled in confusion. '… No.'

Ichitaka hesitated before she asked her next question. 'Do you mind if I asked how she died?'

Raiku stared at her. 'No.'

There was an awkward silence.

Ryuu sighed, rolling his eyes and better grasping how Raiku's mind worked. 'So how did she die, toaster?'

'Electrical malfunction in the hospital when I was born,' Raiku supplied readily. Yamada's eyes immediately flicked over to her, but he chose to remain silent.

'Why aren't you dead then?' Ryuu asked unabashedly. Ichitaka winced, eyes darting between them. 'That was a very callous question,' Raiku heard her murmur to Yamada, who simply laughed.

'Don't know,' Raiku shrugged carelessly, pulling up some grass as she stared at the ground. 'Dad never really talks about it.'

'It must be painful for him,' Ichitaka supposed.

Raiku snickered faintly. 'No, he's just really busy. He doesn't mind talking about her, but neither of us really feel like it most of the time.'

Ryuu nodded, easily accepting the reason. 'I see.'

'What about you, Daisukenojo?' Raiku asked after a moment's respectful pause, looking over at him. 'What's your family like?'

'I've got six brothers and sisters,' he grumbled. 'What do you think it's like?'

'I have no idea,' she responded instantly and honestly. 'I have no brothers or sisters.'

'…Crowded,' he said gruffly, eyes briefly flicking up to meet hers.

'Are you the oldest?' Raiku asked.

'Yeah,' he answered, allowing a small, proud smile to surface. It immediately vanished when Ryuu opened his mouth.

'You're the shortest, too.'

'Shut the hell up!'

"'Electrical malfunction'?" Yamada echoed when the fierce arguing of the two other genin safely drowned out all background noise. Raiku nodded, her eyes wide and sincere.

'Electricity is a dangerous thing.'

"Yeah," he drawled, eyeing her. "I got that."

'You're all insane,' Ichitaka informed them flatly. Raiku's eyes creased in a friendly fashion.

'We're not insane, we're just… sort of weird,' she said sheepishly. Ichitaka gave her a look she felt was less than enthused.

'Shinobi are supposed to be composed, aren't they?' the blonde asked. 'Dignified and powerful?'

'Well, yeah,' Raiku said hesitantly, scratching the back of her head. 'But we're only learning. And we really can do a lot of things that civilians can't. Like running up walls.'

'Anything else?' Ichitaka deadpanned.

'We're not as emotional as we look, either,' Raiku contrived, wincing as she struggled to think of an example. 'I mean… civilians are really into love, aren't they?'

'Are you about to make a sex joke?' Ichitaka asked suspiciously. Yamada snorted derisively, lifting the lid on the pot and stirring. Clearly she hadn't spent any time talking to Raiku before.

On cue, Raiku flushed with embarrassment. 'No, but it's just … for instance, people in my family are always taught that love is watching somebody die. And from what I've seen, it's not the same for civilians. So we can… look really emotional, but I think that our emotions, or how we see the _same_ emotions, are actually different to yours.'

She looked up, expression uncertain. 'Am I… making any sense?'

For a long time, Ichitaka just looked at her. 'Yes,' she said eventually. 'Yes, I think you are.' And then she smiled, for the first time since they'd met her, a smile of reassurance that brought life to her beautiful face, making her so lovely something in Raiku twinged in a feeling almost like pain.

Raiku's eyes lit up with joy. 'I'm glad,' she said simply and sweetly.

"Dinner's ready, ladies!" Yamada announced, hiding a smile. "First come, first served."

The two boys were instantly at each other's throats, rolling in the grass and dirt and using every underhanded method they could think of. Raiku smiled ruefully, scratching the back of her head again.

They were still the worst team ever, from the looks of things.

* * *

A/N: Vanya _Starwind_. I felt the need to specific, somewhat.

Reviews: Yes- I got one instead of just being silently put into favourites! Ahaha!

V Starwind (I'm so discreet): Indeed. Indeed they are.


	9. Carrion and Hairstyles

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Short chapter- that'll teach you to sit and stew silently, adding me to alerts without giving me advice or criticism. Damn you!

Except you, Vanya- you still rock.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

After four days of walking on water, running up cliffs and standing on the bottom of tree branches, Team Ten reached the border to the land of Wind.

Raiku was already audibly panting in the heat, spiky hair drooping slightly. She felt sweat drying on her forehead as they stopped to rest, not daring to sit down for fear of exposed skin coming into contact with even miniscule grains of sand. Ichitaka was sending her concerned looks, but Yamada's expression was smug.

She cracked her neck as she stretched, resting her hands on her knees wearily. 'Is this… as hot as it gets?' she panted, lifting an arm to wipe the sweat from the sides of her face. Ichitaka winced. Raiku had a sinking feeling that she wouldn't like the other woman's answer.

'No,' Ichitaka said, predictably. 'It's only morning. It gets much hotter as the day goes on… especially as we near the village.'

Raiku bit her lip. Sand-nin and Konoha-nin didn't get along. Konoha and Sand in general didn't get along, either. What were the odds any Sand citizen would be willing to give her information on escaping the heat with the massive Konoha symbol on her forehead?

Also, where was she going to get hair dye?

'Shouldn't you take some clothes off, toaster?' Ryuu asked, chewing on a piece of grass he most definitely should _not_ have been able to find in this heat. She eyed it resentfully. 'It's not like you don't have any to spare.'

She silently despaired. She knew she couldn't spare a single one, a single inch of fabric. In heat she may concede but in sand it was simply too dangerous. She wasn't used to walking on sand, so if she tripped and her bare arm flung out, or if she smiled and the sun wasn't bright enough to hide the blue behind her teeth, everything would fall apart.

'I… Gairano… Gairano family rule,' she forced out, shoving her protector up to allow her to wipe her forehead with the back of a glove.

Ryuu raised a sceptical eyebrow. 'Why haven't I seen any other Gairano dressed like that?'

'Specific... special rules,' Raiku explained wearily. And she knew, interestingly enough, that he'd buy it. She'd realised a long time ago that the evasiveness of her family came off as, well…

Mystery.

True to form, Ryuu nodded, taking the grass from between his lips and flicking it away. 'We should go,' he said to Yamada. 'She won't make it if she stays out in this for too long.'

Raiku sent him an exhausted smile. 'Thank you for your concern, Ryuu-kun,' she said formally.

'Not concern, toaster- if you collapse, I'll end up carrying you. _Somehow_ everything you do ends up inconveniencing me more than anyone else,' Ryuu retorted rudely.

Raiku's eyebrow twitched. 'I… I see.'

'No way. She almost burnt my hand off when we had to carry her to the village,' Daisukenojo said, shooting Ryuu a hostile glare.

Raiku brightened. 'Thank you for carrying me Da-,'

'She zapped me with her chakra _and_ bled all over me,' Ryuu denied flatly, folding his arms across his chest as Raiku visibly deflated in the background. 'I tried to stop the bleeding and she actually fought me. While unconscious, she fought me.'

'She landed on me when we were practising cliff-running!'

'She sent a pebble flying into my eye.'

'She's done that to me heaps of times!'

'Yeah, but you never _use_ your eyes, so it doesn't matter as much.'

'Say that again, asshole, I dare you!'

'Watch your language!' Yamada instantly roared, surging to his feet and looming over them with the flames of murderous intent burning in his eyes. 'There's a lady present!'

Raiku's shoulders drooped sadly.

'Ladies! _Ladies _present,' Yamada corrected hastily, wincing faintly. Two belligerent sets of eyes, one unnatural yellow and the other mud brown glared up at him.

'Do you see more than one lady, Daisukenojo?' Ryuu asked tersely, eyes flicking over to the shorter boy.

'No,' Daisukenojo said flatly.

Raiku made a quiet whimper of defeat.

'Me neither,' Ryuu shrugged. 'We should go, shouldn't we Yamada-sensei?'

Yamada sent them displeased looks.

'Yamada-san, I believe that there is a Sand-nin outpost not far from here; we may be able to rest there until nightfall. Travelling by night would make the journey easier on all of us,' Ichitaka volunteered, graciously not looking or gesturing at Raiku.

"Sounds like a good plan, Ichitaka-san!" Yamada said with strained cheer, a small muscle in his eyelid twitching as he looked away from the two boys. "Come on, team!"

'Yes Captain,' Ryuu drawling, giving a casual salute. Raiku stared at him, aghast.

In the heat he was almost _cheerful._

Talkative, even.

Or maybe, as she suspected was more likely, he just took amusement from her suffering.

Deep into paranoid musings, it took her a moment to realise they were walking off without her. 'Wait!' she cried. 'Wait for me!' She took off, yelping as even through the soles of her shoes the heat burnt her feet.

A faint cry of 'I hate the desert!' frightened several vultures from their rest and the dark birds lazily made after the small group. High above even those birds, a hawk circled in front of the sun, keeping a lone eye trained on them, looking for stragglers.

A girl in black with thin limbs was at the top of the list.

* * *

'Water,' Raiku rasped pathetically from Ryuu's back, the side of her face pressed between his shoulder blades. 'I … need water.'

'Stop. Talking,' Ryuu gritted out, fiercely trying to ignore her despite her arms thrown over his neck and his hands on the knees hooked over his hips. 'We agreed there would be no. Talking.'

'I'm sorry, Ryuu-kun,' Raiku croaked, sniffing pathetically. 'But I think I'm actually going to die if I don't get some water soon.'

'That is _talking_.'

'God, just take off some clothes!' Daisukenojo exclaimed, giving her an incredulous look. 'No rule's gonna be worth this sort of grief!'

'Family rules are,' she maintained weakly, managing a feeble cough.

'Always _me_,' Ryuu fumed, eyes burning with repressed ire as he made his scowling way over the sand towards a speck on the horizon Yamada _swore_ was an outpost, spindly girl clutching his back. 'It is _always me_.'

Daisukenojo valiantly tried to force the corners of his lips down, and failed spectacularly. 'What- don't like having girls pressed against you Ryuu-_kun_?' he taunted.

Ryuu's head snapped around to fix him with a glare that should have left him dead. '_Shut up_.'

'I mean, getting sweaty with a girl is something only a real guy-,'

'_I will kill you in ways so horrible your imagination won't let you think of them_.'

'Ryuu-kun,' Raiku pointed out falteringly, trying to shift her legs in his suddenly tight grip. She grimaced. 'Uh… Ryuu-kun, my legs-,'

His head turned around as far as it could, leaving him able to fix a burning yellow eye on her over his shoulder.

'…Are fine,' she finished lamely, shooting him a terrified smile. 'Great, in fact!' She broke into nervous laughter.

His head slowly turned back to the front.

Her nervous laugh trailed off.

She shot Yamada a pleading look.

He ignored her, whistling cheerfully. She narrowed her eyes. 'Your joy is directly inversely proportionate to our pain.'

"What was that, speedy?"

'When are we going to get there?' she asked instead.

He gave her a puzzled look. "Is Ryuu not going fast enough?"

She felt the muscles in Ryuu's back tense dangerously. His fingers dug into the backs of her knees sharply. 'He's fine!' she squeaked. The fingers loosened only slightly. 'He's going very quickly,' she hastily amended. The pressure changed to bearable levels. 'I'm just sort of … dehydrated?'

'That's because you've been sweating all over-,' Daisukenojo began, cut off quickly by Ryuu's furious hiss.

'_You will die a thousand deaths._'

"We'll get there soon, don't you worry!" Yamada assured her, eyes glinting with unrestrained glee. The scars around his mouth gave away his mirth, creasing before his lips ever moved.

'You _could_ just take off something,' Daisukenojo maintained, looking sickeningly refreshed in only a white singlet and his shorts and Konoha sandals. Ryuu was in a similar state of undress, clad in a mesh shirt instead of his usual one. Raiku was…

In fact more covered up than usual. Under her sleeves were layers of protective bandaging, and the dressing on her stomach made it that much worse.

'I… can't,' she sighed in defeat, letting her face fall onto Ryuu's back. She felt the vibrations of his aggravated growl and decided to ignore them.

He wouldn't use one of his wind techniques on her, he liked her!

'Ryuu-kun,' she said slowly after giving that sentiment some actual thought. 'You know you need me alive to do the chuunin exam… right?'

She looked at his back fearfully.

He made a noncommittal sound.

She paled. 'You… do,' she added, cringing.

'We'll see, toaster,' he growled ominously. 'We'll _see_.'

'What, Ryuu- don't you _like_ Raiku?'

'_I will rip your tongue out and bury you alive in the sand_.'

Raiku whimpered quietly, leaning as far away from him as she could without disrupting his balance. _I'm going to die. My own teammate is going to kill me. Daisukenojo will be traumatised and go up to a Drama Level two. _

Daisukenojo didn't look very traumatised, just slightly sunburnt and smug. His multitude of freckles seemed to be gathering new recruits on the edges of his face. Ryuu was tanning, not a freckle in sight.

She narrowed her eyes as realisation struck.

_Ryuu was a Drama Level two or above_.

Only people of a certain Drama Level could go through life looking effortlessly perfect!

Right now his slate grey hair was pushed back from his face in the slight breeze, almost long enough to be called long and pulled into a small ponytail at the nape of his neck.

_Perfect hair._

She'd have to cut it.

_Improbable eyes…_

Well there was no real solution for that. But the _hair_ she could change.

Hair was a dangerous thing.

She absently reached for a kunai.

He wouldn't use his wind techniques on her- he needed her to do the chuunin exam!

She leant forward and prayed to any merciful god listening.

* * *

A/N: Oh, the chapters _can_ get shorter. I give you an update (sometimes TWO updates) every day. Don't toy with me.


	10. Stars and Scars

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Oh look, more favourites... and no constructive criticism. Damn you!

Except Vanya, because she pushes me to improve. Problem free chapter! Viiiiictory.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

"Raiku, take the mask off,' Yamada said wearily, sitting with his head in his hands.

Raiku cradled her broken nose protectively, inching away from him on the makeshift stone bench. 'No! You'll hurt me!'

"You're already hurt, you little-"

'No!'

"Gairano, I am giving you until the count of _three_," Yamada growled, rolling his sleeves up with calculated menace. She tried to squeak and ended up gasping in pain as agony shot up her nose into her brain. The cover of the temporary canvas outpost they currently occupied provided cool shade and a protective team of three Sand-nin, medic luckily included and waiting, the other two jounin training (injuring) Daisukenojo outside.

Outside, Ryuu was doing push ups as punishment.

'I hope you burn to death,' Raiku muttered spitefully, glaring out the flap with an eye swollen and discoloured. The medic squatted in front of her, expression deadpan, waiting patiently. Like Raiku his skin was fully covered, but in cool, sand-coloured linen.

'I can't heal your nose through the mask,' he said flatly, looking up at her.

"You wanna have a freakish nose for the rest of your life!?" Yamada demanded.

'She gave ME a freakish haircut!' Ryuu roared, shifting onto his knees and pointing at her furiously, outrage written on his flushed face. 'And what the FUCK was THAT, Gairano!?'

"Don't swear!" Yamada ordered, shooting him a thoroughly rude gesture.

'Oh, I'm sorry- the sudden RUSH OF AIR TO MY HEAD MUST HAVE GOTTEN TO ME!'

'One day you'll _thank _me!' Raiku exclaimed, pointing at him in return, trying to glare and ending up squinting lopsidedly.

The medic instantly reached up and twisted.

The pain was short and incredible. Raiku shrieked as the bones and cartilage of her nose slid back into place, trying to jerk back and finding the medic unrelenting in the strength of his grip. The dark red glow of his chakra immediately eased the pain when her eyes started to water, the long, tanned hand hovering gently over her eye.

'See?' the Sand-nin deadpanned. 'Not so bad, is it?'

'Thank… you,' she forced out, blinking furiously in an attempt not to save face, but to save moisture. 'It wasn't… so bad…'

He hissed between his teeth as something pale and sharp danced between the centimetres separating his skin and hers, pulling his hand back to look. 'Your clothes generate a lot of static,' he criticised, frowning at the small red mark on his hand.

'Yes,' she agreed with sudden blankness. 'Yes they do.'

"Flower boy!" Yamada roared, cupping his hands around his mouth after he was satisfied with Raiku's condition. "Time to stop playing with the Sand-nin and get back to the mission, get me? Sun's setting!"

Raiku jerked in surprise, turning her head and leaning forward to stare out of the flaps of the tent.

She blinked, once.

The setting sun sank into the shimmering air flowing from the sand dunes, painting the sky in vivid shades of red, orange and the beginnings of blue. Faint clouds created shadows in the skies and onto the dunes below, and as the light began to shift and move the sand looked like water, catching the light and capturing shadows in nets of glistening grains.

The Gairano segment of her mind whistled sharply, snapping its non-corporeal fingers. That was just about enough romanticism, thank you. Cue sarcastic or dry comment:

'I guess this is as close as I can be to the ocean, huh?' she asked Yamada, appropriately dryly, not tearing her eyes from the scene. He shot her an odd look.

"About as far as you can get, actually."

Her lips twitched distantly, unseen. 'Not what I meant.'

Daisukenojo's abrupt reappearance cast a dark shadow over her face, almost completely obscuring the view. He was out of breath, rubbing sand out of his eyes. 'We good to go, Yamada-sensei?' he asked, giving his head a brisk shake and sending sand flying everywhere.

"That depends," Yamada said, slowly leaning back in his chair to squint past him. "Has our little trouble maker learnt his lesson!?" he shouted, raising his voice to epic levels.

There was no response.

"I _said -"_

'Sure,' Ryuu's voice said wearily, glower still audible in his tone. 'Why not?'

"Good! Ichitaka-san, we're ready to go when you are!" he called. A low sound of assent was his answer. He stood, and Raiku winced at the series of cracks as he stretched. "We need to reach Sand by dawn, or speedy's not gonna make it," she made out as he murmured to the Sand-nin, eyes flicking to her to explain the nickname. She tuned out, standing with purposefully loud movements and sauntering out with forced cheer.

Ryuu glared up at her from the sand, sweat beading his brow and practically dripping off him as he took a swig from his water canteen, ugly ropes of sunburn stretching around his torso where his shirt had ridden up or simply failed to protect him. His bare feet were cracked slightly, but as she neared him to apologise, she noticed something that made her eyes crease happily, glad for her teammate.

Around him, the air was cold.

'I'm glad for you, Ryuu-kun!' she smiled, giving him a thumbs up and cheesy eye-crease. 'You mastered that jutsu you were working on!'

Daisukenojo snorted, turning to look at them over his shoulder. 'Bastard didn't feel the need to share, _of_ _course_.'

Ryuu's yellow eyes narrowed into slits.

'I'm… sorry… about your hair,' she said after the silence stretched on to the point of unbearable tension for her. She pointedly did _not_ look at his now very short hair, as spiky as hers but for the bangs, which hung slightly lower. 'It… I wasn't… I wasn't thinking, and I'm really sorry.' She bowed as low as she could, which was impressive when a shinobi did it. 'Please forgive me!'

Those yellow eyes sparked maliciously. 'Oh… I'll forgive you…' Ryuu said slowly, half-laughing, half-growling, as though he couldn't believe what he was saying. 'I'll forgive you on _one condition._'

Raiku tilted her head up without straightening. 'What's the condition?'

She wants to be forgiven, wants it badly, but she can't afford to bond and she can't afford to be careless.

'Take off your mask,' he smiled unpleasantly, showing far too many teeth.

The sun began to fade to purple and deep, rich blues. A star winked to life as they stood there in the heavy silence and the approaching cool, grains of sand stirring in the unnatural air around the seated boy.

'Ryuu-kun, I'm not allowed,' she sighed, dropping her head and assuming an almost comically sheepish expression. 'It's against the family rules.'

'And _assault_ is against the Konoha _laws_. Take the mask off, or consider what your stay in this team will be like with me mad at you.'

She paused.

Trading teams was a bad idea.

'Alright,' she said slowly, looking up again. 'I'll take my mask off. Do you forgive me?'

Ryuu tilted his head, looking at her suspiciously. The pause they fell into was almost stifling. 'Sure,' he said eventually.

She beamed at him, eyes forming those ridiculous crescent shapes of happiness. 'Thank you, Ryuu-kun!' she said cheerfully, straightening and dusting sand from her shorts. 'We should be going now.'

Daisukenojo sputtered indignantly. 'You said you'd take your mask off!' he accused.

'Yes!' she chirped, turning and sending him that curiously happy expression. 'But I never said I'd do it now!'

The pause wasn't so heavy this time.

To her profound relief, Ryuu chuckled slightly. His voice was hoarse and the sound threatening, but he chuckled nonetheless. He stood, cracking the bones in his neck in a way he knew irritated her. He looked right at her, sardonic smirk on his face.

'I can respect that sort of underhanded behaviour,' he said dryly. 'If it's rare.'

She turned back around, shooting him a megawatt smile in all senses of the word. 'No problem!'

'He actually smiled! Maybe he's _not_ an Uchiha clone!' Daisukenojo gasped with mock surprise.

'I don't refuse to smile because I'm an overly emotional moron- I don't smile because I believe baring teeth is an act of aggression,' Ryuu smiled unpleasantly.

Raiku looked at his perfectly white teeth, and shuddered. She personally never wanted to see them again.

'There are exceptions,' he allowed, turning his back to them.

'Remind me never to piss _him_ off,' Daisukenojo muttered to her, taking a few casual steps to stand at her side.

'You wouldn't listen even if I did, Daisuke-kun,' she sighed.

"Damn right," Yamada said sagely, nodding and putting a heavy hand on each other their shoulders. "Now quit dawdling, ladies, because we have a _real_ lady to escort home!"

Raiku deflated again, sagging.

"Oh I'm not even going to _bother_, speedy, you can just _deal with it_."

Yamada pushed past, settling into a steady pace that took him at decent speed over the dunes. Daisukenojo followed, again drawing level with Ryuu before the two split off, leaving Ichitaka to settle in the middle and Raiku to guard the back, completing the diamond formation.

Raiku looked up at Ichitaka passed her, into the midnight blue sky. A curious look stole over her features, as she was once again confronted with the feeling spurred by Ichitaka's smile, confronted with a beauty too perfect, a beauty too unspeakable and untouchable. The stars numbered in millions, caught together by ethereal celestial trials and winking at her faintly from their sea of darkness, hanging suspended over the flat and limitless sands she stood on.

She felt so small.

It was a good feeling, for any Gairano, constantly twisted into webs of narrative and searching desperately for a hole to escape through.

'Oi toaster- hurry it up!' Daisukenojo shouted back to her, grounding her instantly. She darted across the rapidly cooling sands, feet padding silently into the soft surface and propelling her easily. She didn't know what she'd been worrying about: sand was easy to move in.

Footprints made of glass trailed after her and shone with light stolen from stars, and in the dark above them, a hawk followed.

* * *

'Victory!' she crowed- croaked, really- as she stood inside the deep chasm in the earthen barricade surrounding Sand. 'Victory!'

'We made it. _Yay_,' Ryuu snorted, rolling his eyes and absently chewing on a piece of grass.

'Where did you get that…?' she asked, staring at him. He quirked a brow.

'What was that?'

'Commentary on poorly constructed narrative function, it doesn't matter,' she dismissed hastily, raising her hands in front of her. 'But we got to Sand!'

'Two hours _after_ dawn,' Daisukenojo pointed out, successfully popping her bubble. 'We were too slow.'

A Sand-nin with a thoroughly sour expression stood with his arms crossed at the end of the enormously thick and tall barricade gap, arms crossed and feet set firmly apart. His eyes were curiously darkly rimmed, a swathe of white fabric hanging to obscure half of his face from his forehead protector.

'Hello! We brought Ichitaka-san!' Raiku greeted, waving enthusiastically. Other than a slight twitch of his eye, he gave no response until Yamada walked up to and towered over him, expression curiously blank.

'Konoha Team Yamada reporting the successful completion of the escort mission assigned by Ichitaka-san.'

For some reason, this statement did not in fact warrant full quotation marks.

Raiku's eyes creased with worry. Behind her back, she could _feel_ the other two exchanging looks. She tried to look up at the sky, craning her neck to do so, but the walls were simply too high.

_The walls were crawling with Plot._

She gaped in horror, cringing back. A single Plot! Wait, a single Plot!? That was ridiculous! There was no such _thing_ as a Plot this big!

Unless it was Uzumaki Naruto, but his name was actually forbidden in her family, as saying it would prompt spontaneous combustion or dramatic pregnancy. Naruto was, for this reason, probably the cause of the population boom as well as the 'anonymous shinobi-to-villain' fodder main supplier.

Verily, for the Gairano family truly did know trouble when they saw it.

She gagged, reflexively, earning herself several odd looks. A small part of the Plot broke off and slithered towards her, faithfully dogging her steps as she discreetly tried to inch away.

Yamada turned, inclining his head to Ichitaka. 'Ichitaka-san, my team and I are glad to have served you well,' he said formally, for some reason still failing to recover his illustrious punctuation.

The white-blonde woman bowed. 'I honour you and your team, Yamada-san.'

She half turned, inclining her head to the three genin watching her. The corners of her lips twitched into a ghost of that exquisite smile, before she turned on her heel and vanished into the light beyond the chasm.

Raiku tried to surreptitiously lean away from a wall, which waved at her.

The Sand-nin turned abruptly, moving away from them stiffly.

"Well, ladies, we've got until tomorrow night to recover, then we set off, get me!?" Yamada boomed cheerfully, turning to them with that smile that frightened Raiku still.

She nodded uneasily, casting an eye over the walls. She was tired- exhausted, in fact. But the steady surges of electricity that her body provided her from its desperation kept her moving and alert. It was a strange feeling, almost like heaviness under her sternum, one that she physically was unable to succumb to as long as this strange feeling, almost like elation burned along her veins. But she was tired, and she recognised the danger signs. Mostly because she had a senbon still sticking to her magnetised forehead protector, but that wasn't the important thing here.

"Welcome to Sand, team," Yamada grinned, surrounded by the brilliant nimbus of light that was the exit.

He stepped downwards, steadily vanishing from their sight. Raiku and the others paused, before they ran. She easily led the way, skidding to a halt as she almost tripped over the stairs descending into Sand.

She stared, wide eyed.

Sand lay inside a giant earthen bowl, and sprawled for miles inside it. The city itself was far below the level of the dunes outside and made of buildings the same colour as the desert outside rather than steel and glass. Wood was scarce, obviously a rare commodity in such a distant and isolated place. The earthen walls cradled the city and the sky above it, and once more she was struck by the _space_.

That and the Plot.

It literally surrounded the city.

The piece that had detached itself clung helplessly to her foot, unable to assimilate with her as the inaudible crackling of her skin kept it at bay. She jerked her foot, but it stubbornly refused to leave. 'Hell yes,' Daisukenojo smirked, putting his hands on his hips. 'Traveling to different hidden towns? This is totally what I signed up for.'

'And here I was thinking that it was for the excitement and honour of protecting your country and loved ones,' Ryuu drawled.

'Nope,' Daisukenojo said without a hint of embarrassment. 'This is totally it, right here.'

Raiku turned her head and looked at him for a moment, then turned back to face the city. She was, in truth, paralysed with indecision. Clearly this was a plot far bigger than what she was accustomed to, spanning multiple lives. It must have been anchored here by some primary component, now unable to leave. Webs of narrative hung over the city like some foul web, the thickest leading directly into the most fortified building- probably the office of the Kazekage.

She wasn't qualified to deal with this.

* * *

A/N: Oh gee.... I've written another chapter people will silently enjoy. You're making me so bitter. You're all just lucky I'm writing this because I want to, rather than for praise.

I love you all, I'm just joking.

Except you, over there. I don't know what your problem is.

Reviews

V: I'll taunt them as much as I please! 3


	11. Sand and Floodwater

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: You see?! YOU SEE WHAT THIS IS? The second chapter I give you in a single day, for the second time. Oh, you should worship my beta. Also me. But her first, and to Vanya Starwind I say: you win _this_ round.

I present to you- Gaara! He's in this for the first time. It definitely won't be the last. Ah, my oh-so-cowardly Raiku, you poor, poor bastard.

Note: I'm looking for suggestions on pairing right now, as well as situations for the canon characters to be in. Submit your vote if you like.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

It was without fail, hesitation or conscious thought that Raiku got herself into trouble in Sand. It was probably Yamada's fault.

"No vacancies again, team," he said apologetically, stooping to get through the doorway into a motel. "So they're all dead-set on ignoring everyone from Konoha, in other words."

Raiku sagged in disappointment. She was… so tired.

"So team, we're going to split up. Find yourself a hotel and try and get a place there," he ordered, setting his hands on his hips. "This is your new mission, get me? Once you've found a place that'll accept all four of us, send up the signal."

They all looked at Raiku.

'Why am I the signal, again?' she asked dubiously, raising an eyebrow.

'Because you explode sometimes,' Daisukenojo said, mockingly echoing her words in hospital.

'Right, right…'

"So when you find a place, book it and get speedy to send one up. Team Ten, go!"

Reluctantly, the three genin parted ways. Raiku trudged down the street made of packed sand, ignoring pointedly the vendors who waved at her and called out prices beguilingly. No hair dye, no purchase. But the colourful fabric and delicately elegant glass that was so rare in Konoha did catch her eye occasionally, at which point she forced her attention to the piece of Plot trailing after her woefully. It occasionally made sounds it probably thought were pleading, snatches of voices of the people it ensnared. She made sure to tread very hard when it did so.

She made her way to a place that looked desperate enough to be willing to accept Konoha-nin, made of clay and sand, with holes instead of glass windows. The surly and largely unwashed man at the counter had taken one look at her forehead protector and claimed no vacancies, straight-faced despite the clear row of keys behind him. She'd wheedled half-heartedly, but found herself unable to maintain her cheerful persona in the heat.

Now she sat on a swing and leant her forehead against the chains, feet absently trailing on the ground. There had been children playing when she'd arrived, but when she'd seized the opportunity to steal the swing to sit on, they'd been pulled away by their parents. The act was curiously choreographed, and she assumed it was because there were frequently causes to pull away their children in Sand. From what she'd seen, it was a harsh place with tough people that tried their best to make it seem better than it was.

She smiled to herself faintly, closing her eyes. That description sounded familiar. But because Raiku was a magnet for trouble as a sore thumb in a world of fingers, even this restfulness simply couldn't be allowed to survive.

The texture of the air changed.

She pressed herself closer to the chain reflexively, refusing to budge before the request was ever made.

'Move.'

The Plot at her feet surged upwards, shoving her backwards by throwing itself into her solar plexus. She grasped the chain tightly and managed to catch herself with her head only inches above the ground, legs splayed awkwardly to try and keep precarious balance. She tried to look at the voice and was blocked by Plot, trying to actually hide in her clothes. She pulled herself slowly upright, wobbling more than was dignified for a Konoha-nin. Her eyes slowly settled on green ones.

Green ones without pupils.

'Hey,' she said slowly, eyes creasing into a nervous smile. 'I'm Gairano Raiku. What's your name?' She winced at how patronising she sounded. A thick web of Plot shimmered and vanished in every breath the other boy took, visible even in the arms crossed across his chest. His hair was an improbable shade of red, tousled and kept short. His eyes were rimmed in black no cosmetic could emulate, a symbol for love marked out on his forehead in ink under his skin. On his back was a gourd with an almost comically large stopper in the end, his clothes the light, practical wear of a shinobi in this sort of environment.

The hostile green eyes didn't shift, the boy obviously still waiting for her to obey his order.

He smelt like blood.

The sand under her feet shifted in a way compelled by no wind, and she edged forward on the swing, holding out a gloved hand. 'Nice to meet you,' she said cheerfully, tilting her head in a way she felt was friendly. 'I'm here on a mission from Konoha. You're a shinobi too, right?'

It was clear that she was in danger- she was awkward, not stupid. Through sheer force of will she kept her eyes from checking for a teammate or some sort of- any sort of- help, praying quietly to the force of Obscurity that she would be too troublesome to kill, maim or in any way injure.

'I'm, uh, probably annoying you, right?' she ventured, sliding slowly off the swing and onto her feet, dropping her outstretched hand and raising the other to scratch the back of her head. 'So… I'll…' she trailed off, desperately searching for some sort of body language to read, some sort of physical or visual cue to take. He remained perfectly still, eyes narrowed in unconcealed hostility. 'I'll just… go…'

The silence stretched on agonisingly.

'I should probably find my teammates,' she continued on, starting to babble in nervousness. 'We're having a hard time finding a hotel that'll accept Konoha-nin, with the way things are between our villages, and I should go back and tell them I couldn't find anything…'

She edged around him, giving him a wide berth and never turning her back to him in the guise of courtesy. The Plot! It was _huge_.

She resolved to end this on a good note, because she'd be _damned_ if any Plot would keep her from being polite, and smiled at him brilliantly, giving him a two-fingered salute and valiantly crushing her trepidation down. 'It was nice to meet you! I hope to see you again, mystery-nin!'

That last bit was a bit much, she decided, and promptly ran.

He remained where he stood when she'd left him, perfectly still and immovable, but for the eyes sliding back to the swing.

'Hey toaster! Signal for me!' Daisukenojo called as he caught sight of her trying to turn a corner and accelerate at the same time, very nearly colliding with two Sand-nin. The two cast her looks of disgust shortly before her hand shot into the air, electricity escaping from the gap between her sleeve and glove to explode violently in the air above the town. At that point they simply decided to save themselves some trouble and move on.

Daisukenojo snorted. 'It's not that great,' he muttered, slouching over to her. 'What were you running from, anyway? Did a dog look at you?'

'Sand-nin,' Raiku managed, waving that same hand in a direction just to his left. He, admirably, didn't flinch. 'Scary.' She pulled a face and lowered her eyebrows pensively to try and imitate the dark look, succeeding in looking disgruntled.

Daisukenojo stared at her. 'Are you on drugs or something, toaster?'

'No! But… it was…' She broke off, accepting with a sigh that she would always be the wimp of the group. It was inevitable. She was fairly sure Ryuu wasn't capable of fear, and Daisukenojo's constant desire to outdo the taller boy meant if he was ever afraid than he didn't show it. Since she only cared about getting along well enough to work efficiently as a team, she didn't bother to hide her fear in trivial situations.

"Have you been running again, speedy?" Yamada asked suspiciously materialising at her side with a silence no man of his size should have been able to accomplish. She managed not to scream. "Because I told you not to attract attention, remember?"

'I wasn't _not_ running,' she said evasively.

'Who found the place?' Ryuu asked from two inches behind her backbone. She twitched.

'Is it "sneak up on Raiku" day?' she asked, twisting to look at him awkwardly with a sceptical expression.

'Yes.'

'I found it,' Daisukenojo announced, gloating. 'Place just over there. They want to be paid first thing in the morning and they've got two rooms available for us. Konoha-nin and all.'

'Why is it "sneak up on Raiku" day?' she persisted, ignoring the redhead.

'Because you're jumpy and it's funny.'

'I don't think it's very funny,' she criticised.

'I never said it was funny for you.'

'Oh, goodie- _I'm going to kill you._'

'How about you try, toaster-head?'

"How much?" Yamada said wearily, trying his best to ignore the two fighting genin. Daisukenojo shrugged.

'I figured that was your thing to take care of.'

Yamada's attention was instantly caught when Ryuu snarled in pain, taking several defensive steps back and holding his left hand protectively. Raiku's bright eyes were narrowed vengefully, burning in challenge. 'How about you try that again, Ryuu-kun? Wanna see if it happens again!?'

'Who the hell uses their own chakra to fend off something that weak!?' he shot back, bringing his scorched fingers to his mouth to try and lessen the sting.

'I told you _not to touch me_-,'

"Break it up or I will break _you_, you two!" Yamada bellowed, stepping between them. "Upon my oath I am not a violent man, but if you don't get your asses over to the hotel _right now_ I will start cracking skulls!"

Raiku shot Ryuu a vile glare, hackles raised. The yellow-eyed boy scowled at her, reluctantly turning away towards Daisukenojo, who knew a hint when he saw one and moved to lead the way to the hotel.

"And you, speedy, I'm going to have a long talk with later, get me?" Yamada growled, grabbing her by the back of her shirt. Her hair brushed his knuckles as he lifted her, singeing his gloves and burning the hair on the back of his unprotected fingers. "You do _not_ use that on your teammates," he hissed.

'I didn't!' she shot back, equally enraged. 'He tried to flick me in the face and it showed up on its own! Like it always does! And I couldn't stop it, like I always can't!'

"Try. Harder,' he ordered in low, dangerous tones. Raiku stiffened, a surge of resentment hitting her. Did he honestly believe that this was a matter of choice? Did he honestly believe that this was something she was just _allowing_ to happen?

Yamada, on the other hand, instantly recognised his mistake. The poorly concealed resentment struggling free in her eyes made it clear for him. His job was to be the adult in this relationship, and to set an example, but he'd berated her for something she couldn't stop and probably hated. That sort of thing encouraged self-loathing if they took it to heart, and the more destructive concealed loathing of the institutions that the one berating them represented if they didn't.

"Gairano," he said quietly. "Gairano, look at me."

She refused, stubbornly, averting her gaze.

"Gairano, that's an order," he persisted, shaking her lightly.

'Cram it,' she said bluntly. In her peripherals it looked like Yamada was fighting to stop his jaw from dropping into a scandalised expression. Nastily, she wondered if anyone had told him to do anything since he'd had that fortieth growth spurt.

"Gairano," he said again. "I'm sorry."

'I don't _care_.'

She could tell he was surprised. Raiku wasn't supposed to be the stubborn one, she was the cheerful wimp!

Call it an exposed nerve.

"Gairano, I'll help you, but I got angry and I'm sorry. Get me?"

And something completely unconnected and irresistible forced her jaw open and formed the words of forgiveness that she wasn't ready to provide. Her eyes widened in surprise.

"Alright. We'll think of some ways to help you out, get me?" he asked with gruff kindness, setting her on the ground. "We'll sort you out."

She nodded, trying desperately to shake her head. She didn't want to learn. She didn't want to risk it for something as inconsequential as touch, and the Plot at her feet was far too happy with this news. She didn't _want_ to be powerful and she didn't _want_ to be accessible. The electric barrier forced her to keep others at bay, and as long as it existed there couldn't be a Love Interest.

The Gairano family had Views on love.

"See you inside," he said, scratching the side of his nose in what she'd realised was a nervous gesture. As he walked away the reverie was broken, leaving her in full control of her functions.

She stared in fear at nothing at all.

She'd never had control taken away from her before.

* * *

They'd left Sand early.

The desert was obviously not a place to go for wet weather, but once year there was a month of torrential flooding. They couldn't afford to be caught in the hostile hidden town for a month, and their trip had coincided with the wet season in a way most unfortunate.

When they reached the barricade, the sky was so dark with clouds it was almost black, thunder rumbling with the fierce illumination of lightning shining through the thinner patches in warning. It was starting to rain very lightly, and Raiku's mask was exchanged for a full one, her feet clad in bandages in addition to every other piece of clothing she sported, blood singing at every boom of thunder.

She wanted to run.

Wind stirred layers of sand and sent them racing over the heavier dunes, and once again she was reminded of water as she stood inside the entrance through the barricade into Sand. The Sand-nin that had greeted them was standing and looking up at the sky with those curiously dark-rimmed eyes. 'If you travel in this, you'll die,' he said bluntly.

"I think we'll be alright," Yamada said firmly, face serious.

The jounin cast him a derisive look. 'Lightning strikes what's tallest. You'll be in a desert without vegetation or shelter. You'll be burnt to death within minutes once the storm begins. The air becomes humid enough to drown in, which isn't helped by the rain, and the wind can strip the flesh from your bones. The sand doesn't absorb the water effectively and you'll find yourself first wading, then swimming. If you travel in this, you'll die,' he repeated.

"We'll be alright," Yamada repeated back to him, dark brown eyes hard and unflinching.

'You're idiots,' the Sand-nin said flatly. 'Konoha-nin… you all think you're invincible.'

'I can take care of the lightning,' Raiku murmured very, very quietly.

"I know, speedy," Yamada assured her.

'I can take care of the wind, if we move slowly enough,' Ryuu announced firmly.

Daisukenojo realised he was, in all senses of the word, the short straw and scowled darkly.

"We'll be alright," Yamada said yet again, looking down at the Sand-nin in challenge. He seemed unimpressed.

'Your team is comprised of genin. If you survive to see me again, I'll eat my own forehead protector,' he muttered, turning and stalking stiffly away.

"Speedy, do what you need to do," Yamada said, turning to them and folding his arms over his chest. "Sullen, you think you can maintain chakra use for that long?"

'Yes,' he said firmly.

Yamada eyed him warily. "Can you draw any from shorty?"

'I can give him as much chakra as he damn well needs,' Daisukenojo scowled up at him fiercely, freckled face stubborn. 'You know that.'

"Well, a Hatori technique's gotta be good for something," Yamada joked. Daisukenojo rolled his eyes, which brought them into Raiku's general vicinity. He gawked. 'What the hell are you doing!?' he demanded.

Raiku paused in the middle of peeling off her gloves and sleeves. 'What?' she asked self-consciously.

'You said you were taking care of the lightning, not stripping!' he exclaimed, trying to find a hint of facial expression under that stupid full mask.

'They're directly related!' she shot back defensively.

'How the hell are they? You expecting the lightning to get embarrassed and give you some privacy!?'

'Why don't you ask Ryuu what _his_ plan entails, huh!?'

'Because his doesn't make him half naked!'

'I'm still wearing more clothes than you!' she said disbelievingly. It was true- she wore the sleeveless black shirt and dark grey shorts, the coverings on her shins and feet abandoned and leaving only bandages. The full mask vanished into her pack.

'…You look like a goddamned ANBU!'

'Don't change the subject!'

'You _look_ naked!'

'I'm not!'

'But you look that way because you're always fully covered up! Put a goddamn jacket on!' Realisation struck. 'You'll _freeze_!' he said triumphantly.

'I'm taking care of that too,' Ryuu muttered, rolling up his sleeves and pinning them up with a senbon. His gold eyes were distant, lips moving slightly as he recited something to himself.

'I hate you,' Daisukenojo said to him bluntly. 'You _want_ her out there like that!?'

'She's taking the mask off. Yes,' he responded instantly. Daisukenojo's head whipped around so quickly it cracked. Raiku's bare fingers- long, perfectly unmarked fingers, some part of his brain pointed out smugly- were settled on the dark latex edges of her mask.

Raiku fidgeted uncomfortably under three sources of intense scrutiny. 'You're making me feel really awkward.'

'Do it, toaster,' Ryuu ordered. 'It was part of our agreement.' Bound by narrative constraints the wind blew his hair in front of his face, contrasting with his perfectly still form to make him unearthly in his magnetism.

'You know you're ordering me to take more clothes off? Daisuke-kun, defend me!'

He shook his head silently, and she noted with a sinking feeling the strangely charged (she took no responsibility) atmosphere. Daisukenojo even looked better in the storm, the forces of causality demanding that in the rain, everything really _was_ better looking. His cute face seemed older than its years, clothes stirring in the wind.

Yamada's sombre, scarred face looked appropriately dramatic and stern. He seemed the only constant fixture in the impending storm.

Raiku resolved to never go outside again. She yanked down the mask and let it stay around her neck, lifting her impossibly bright eyes to stare at them defiantly. 'Forget my face,' she ordered when it became apparent they weren't intending to. 'I'm good to go, Yamada-sensei.'

He nodded. "Sullen?"

Ryuu cracked his knuckles, not moving his eyes from Raiku's face. 'I'm ready, Yamada-sensei.'

"Shorty?"

Daisukenojo tore his gloves off, settling next to Ryuu. 'I'm good.'

"If it gets too much, you'll need to carry him, walk on water and feed him chakra at the same time, get me?" Yamada cautioned, eyes darting between the two. "You need to be alright with this now."

'I can do it!' Daisukenojo growled.

"Team Ten, move out," he said in response, squaring his massive shoulders.

He waited for Raiku to pass him. She trod lightly over the sand, bare arms covered with goosebumps in reaction to the light breeze. The temperature dropped and eerie shadows darted over the sand as the sand itself shifted, the lightning as yet still contained above casting horrible and beautiful silhouettes onto the earth.

There was a curious tension, a curious weight as the air hung heavy with what was about to strike. Yamada fell into place at the back behind the two boys, already knitting together a web of chakra that would cover his feet indefinitely. He had performed the same function for Raiku, well aware of her impending distraction- sand covered in water would be disastrous.

Daisukenojo was preoccupied doing the same for he and his temporary partner, brow wrinkled with concentration. A Hatori's skill lay in their incredible proficiency at the transfer and manifestation of chakra, while Ryuu's lay entirely in his manipulation of air, a skill he knew the older boy hadn't learnt from his family.

Raiku was completely carefree, in direct contrast. At last, she could be useful! She could expose her abilities without having a dramatic storyline concerned totally with them and without self-sacrifice! Unfortunately this opened up a lot of possibilities for Ryuu's strange wind techniques and their origins, but that was alright: he'd just have to get a girlfriend. Girlfriends were the _ultimate_ defence against Plots, unless they were powerful or excessively cheerful.

And it was common knowledge Ryuu was allergic to cheerful people.

This would, quite literally, be a walk in the park for her. Lightning adored her, coveted her so fiercely that each time there was a storm she had to be removed from the compound- Gairanos had enough expenses to cover without having to repair their own facilities, as well as numerous paternity suits to deal with when a family member had said the name of _he-who-must-not-be-named_.

Whenever Naruto was to be spoken of, they simply said "duty two".

The Gairano family knew trouble when they had to pay for it.

But the point was that her teammates would be perfectly safe as long as she remained decently exposed to the elements.

The wind began to cut instead of caress, and Yamada gave a sharp whistle. Instantly the sand around their slow moving feet stilled, the currents of wind around them in abrupt and unwilling rest. Ryuu's left hand, still burnt, was held in front of him in a curious one-handed seal, the other gripping Daisukenojo's upper arm tightly to stop him from tripping as he walked with his eyes closed in concentration. The jutsu required very little of his chakra that she could sense, but the knowledge of wind pressures and currents required was expansive, the concentration levels necessary truly formidable.

Moisture beaded on her forehead as the rain increased ever so slightly, little more than mist in the air at its current level.

Lightning struck for the first time.

It greedily split the air, and Daisukenojo gave a hoarse cry as it slammed into Raiku's diminutive figure head on, electric fingers grasping and seizing her clothes as it sought to bury itself under her skin. The wind instantly began to pull at them as Ryuu responded to thunder and opened his eyes, losing control of the technique in concern.

Yamada attached his chakra to his feet and continued on.

The lightning lasted less than two seconds, two seconds longer than lightning usually deigned to grace the earth. When it vanished Raiku was left with a brilliant, iridescent glow of blinding white, still continuing casually on.

The boys stared at her with varying levels of horror and shock, before Ryuu harshly yanked on Daisukenojo's arm and folded his hand into that curious seal. 'Wind seal technique,' he said quietly, closing his eyes again.

The wind abated.

The rain started.

Within an hour they were walking on a violently disturbed ocean that had once been a desert, the only light that of the lightning surging to meet its earthly counterpart, the wind formerly sealed around them now whirling and deflecting as much of the torrential rain as it could. Raiku remained outside the barrier, sparking and surging with power like some humanised storm, unflinching as the wind stung her face and the water blinded her, slowing her steps and weighing her down. There was no cold of winter or snow that could compare to this. It seized her bones and constricted her heart, alleviated only by the heavenly electricity that sought so desperately to encompass and consume her. Its greed was matched only by that distant, guilty part of her that refused to be a Gairano in favour of being a shinobi, that part that had wanted to train and devour.

They made good progress.

And when night fell and the storm continued to rage and demand, the electric instrument of a god's wrath flashed violently and brightly enough to show a dark shape in the distance. Led by a glowing figure and protected by a boy as much wind as flesh, they struggled on towards the end of the desert, and the end of Wind Country.

* * *

A/N: Ooooh, second chapter? In a day? I spoil you silent readers.

Review Response:

V: In all honesty, we can just hold a conversation here. I see the wisdom in your comments, however.


	12. Coordination

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: This time I have no beta to thank... V's fingers have been given a holiday.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

They sat in what passed for silence in the howling wind and freezing cold. Raiku's glow refused to fade, built inside the heart of a storm. She felt…

Happy.

The glow wasn't trying to get out because the power wanted to stay inside. Because it didn't come from her it didn't want to burn or devour, because it came _to_ her she was all it wanted to be.

Her blood sang.

"Speedy, sullen, shorty- you all did Konoha proud," Yamada said, breaking their equivalent to silence. Ryuu leaned on Daisukenojo's back, yellow eyes glazed with exhaustion and fever. His left hand, the one with which he helped to keep them safe, shook as it lay next to him on the wet ground, and the impact of foreign chakra made his skin crawl and his stomach clench. Even a Hatori can only do so much. Daisukenojo's face was flushed with exertion, and his hands shook as he raised his canteen to his lips, wiping his mouth roughly.

'I know how Ryuu does what he does,' he said eventually, avoiding Raiku's gaze. Ryuu gave a soft snort at this, regaining some of his usual derision as the wind tried to reconcile with him, pushing lightly at his hair. 'And I know Yamada-sensei's just the toughest guy around. But you've been doing some pretty crazy shit recently, Raiku-chan. You're gonna tell us why.' He passed the canteen back to Ryuu, who had finished his own within the first hour of the storm.

Raiku tilted her head. She opened her mouth to speak, and Daisukenojo watched the threads of electricity span the inside, dancing between her tongue and the roof of her mouth.

'Gairanos don't have bloodline limits,' he said quietly, and she knew he was trying to stop her from lying.

She closed it again, and looked at him for a moment.

'I explode sometimes,' she said simply, lips twitching upwards into a beseeching smile.

After a moment, more because the tension was broken than because what she said was funny, Ryuu began to laugh. Daisukenojo joined in, shoulders wracked with harsh laughing, half-coughing from exhaustion. Yamada chuckled to himself while Raiku just smiled sheepishly, hanging her head, complete with its shock of snow-white – lightning white- hair.

'That explains why I caught you with ink in your hair,' Ryuu managed between breaths, the force of his laughter hurting his weakened form.

'Never mention that again,' she pleaded good-naturedly.

'I'm telling _everyone_,' he said, relishing the words, shooting her a wicked, if exhausted grin over Daisukenojo's shoulder.

'I'll tell everyone Daisuke-kun had to carry you!' she threatened, pointing a lightning-clad finger at him.

'And I'll tell them it was because I was holding off a hurricane, how about that?' he countered, head falling back onto Daisukenojo's shoulder wearily. 'But seriously,' he added in afterthought. 'Tell anyone about it and I'll murder you.'

Raiku grinned at him mischievously.

Yamada looked at the electricity suspended above them as they camped just inside Fire Country, acting as both illumination and call for help. "Yeah," he said proudly. "I've still got the best team."

'I didn't know you were trading teams,' Ryuu said blandly.

Raiku giggled, biting her fist to try and keep it in as Yamada shot Ryuu a dirty look. "You're lucky you're so good with hot air, get me?"

'Ryuu made a joke!' Daisukenojo grinned, craning his neck to look over his shoulder. 'Reckon the world's ending?'

'It'll start with you if you keep moving,' Ryuu cautioned, lips twitching upwards despite his valiant effort to stop them.

'How long do you think it'll take Konoha to send a relief team?' Raiku asked Yamada, smiling brightly.

"They should get here tomorrow," he said, casting another look at the beacon above him. "Speedy… how are you making that?" he asked, frowning slightly.

She shrugged.

'That's the spirit,' Ryuu drawled.

'See, whenever someone's suffering, you get really talkative,' she pointed out, giving him an odd look. '_Even_ _when it's you_. You're… the miniature form of Ibiki.'

'Don't say that,' Daisukenojo groaned. 'Last thing we need is for him to get ideas, toaster!'

'I still don't think I deserve that nickname,' she said, rolling her eyes.

'I don't know how you got it, and I don't care. It works.'

"Get some sleep, team," Yamada interrupted shaking his head in exasperation. "You all need it. Except you, speedy."

'Do you have any idea how often you add that to your sentences? I am the exception to every rule.'

"You're running home."

Raiku stared at him. Daisukenojo broke into loud guffaws, wiping tears from his eyes roughly. He continued even when she quite rudely sent a jolt up his spine, hitting Ryuu in the process. 'Sucks to be you, toaster!'

"You need to report the mission and tell them about _that_," he said, jerking a thumb at the beacon. "They're not going to see it in the storm, get me?"

'Then why did you ask me to make it!?' she demanded.

"Wanted to see if you could."

She sank back, fuming, power sent crackling and blue washing over her skin in waves.

"You don't scare me," he snorted, waving a massive hand. "And tell Suzu-chan I'll be home soon," he added in lower tones, coughing to try and hide his slight blush in his hand.

'Why can't we just wait until tomorrow and travel home under our own power?' she asked suspiciously.

"Because we just walked through Wind Country monsoon season. We deserve a goddamn lift. Hell, we deserve a _parade_. I've seen ANBU go in and never come out."

'That's a lie.'

"Jounin," he conceded. "Jounin have gone in and never come out."

Raiku hung her head, sighing heavily. 'This is because of that "fast as lightning" line, isn't it? I'm being punished because of the way I was born? This is discrimination. Discrimination and harassment. I'm so telling your wife.' She stood, dusting her hands off. 'Also? I'm leaving my pack. I may not come back, and then _you'll _have to carry it. Daisuke-kun, I'm looking at you.' She grinned at the face he pulled at her and stretched her arms above her head, crackling contentedly despite the lack of positive adverb used with such an action in any other context.

'"Electrical malfunction",' Ryuu said suddenly, opening his eyes as he remembered and as she took a step to run away.

She blinked, caught off guard at the non-sequester. 'I'm sorry?'

'Your mother. You said she died of an "electrical malfunction",' he elaborated, staring into the darkness of the forest, not turning his head towards her.

'That's because she did,' she said, giving him an odd look and pelting away.

She was unprepared for the speed. As soon as she took a step she came to a halt, shrieking, feet digging deep grooves into the ground as she sought to stop herself, yanking branches she hadn't been quick enough to dodge out of her hair and in one case, out of her arm. She spun around to stare at the trail she'd left behind her in the span of only several seconds, some of the branches still glowing red at the point of severing as she'd _exploded_ into motion and away-

She looked down at her smugly glowing hands, then back at the rapidly cleared path through the forest. In the distance- the very _distant_ distance, surely she hadn't gone that far- her beacon shone.

Ryuu exuded boredom, but at this moment he broadcast derision to her from several kilometres away. Oh and she could just _imagine_ the look on his face, the one with that slightly raised eyebrow and that infuriating sense of amusement at her expense. She wanted to kill him and he probably hadn't done anything.

"TRY. DODGING," Yamada's roar echoed through the trees, strangely quiet and tinny at the current difference in location.

She wasn't that loud, she wasn't going to bother trying to respond. '"Try dodging",' she echoed mockingly, pulling a face and setting her hands on her hips in exaggerated posture. '"Get me, speedy? My name's Yamada-sensei and I think that I'm _so tough-_"'

There was an ominous boom from his general direction. She yelped and turned to run; the world exploded around her in a maelstrom of electricity, the forest sped towards her and her feet just kept moving as the lightning tore her through the trees and rain, overtaking the wind and ripping branches and saplings up behind her in the slipstream. Her body went too fast for her mind to keep up and her reflexes weren't quick enough to dodge _anything_ at this sort of velocity, until suddenly they were.

She wasn't going quickly. The world was moving slowly. And then she realised that that wasn't true either, she was just moving. Her brain caught up to everything else and swore explosively, kicking electricity in the face and demanding both a cigarette to calm it down and a progress report, hog-tying her own ability and sitting on it with a steering wheel.

She could dodge: she'd be a damn poor kunoichi if she couldn't. She could jump and run and walk on water. If she could dodge a knife, she could dodge a tree. If she could dodge a senbon-

Raiku jerked her head to stop the train of low-brow humour and borderline plagiarism, the movement sending a tree exploding into another, split down in half.

With this sort of speed no one would ever be able to catch her again.

And then, because some things are stronger than lightning, she collapsed.

* * *

Ryuu, safely unconscious, was slung over Yamada's shoulder as they made their way back to Konoha with an escort service of Team Gai. Daisukenojo was stubbornly refusing help despite the unhealthy blue pallor of his skin, standing between Rock Lee and Tenten so they could, to his supreme embarrassment, keep an eye on him.

"So she didn't make it back at all?" Yamada frowned, turning his head to talk to the green spandex-clad Gai.

'No, my friend! But don't worry, for we s-,'

'She's in a tree,' Hyuuga Neji stated flatly, cutting him off. 'Asleep. One kilometre ahead.'

Yamada's expression flattened. "Figures she'd fall asleep," he grumbled.

'Considering all the crap she took for us in the middle of a hurricane, I think she earned it,' Daisukenojo pointed out.

Gai smiled hugely at Yamada, almost blinding him with the glare. 'Yes Yamada! You must tell me how it is your team so bravely-'

"Could someone get ready to go and get my student, please?" Yamada interrupted quickly. "She might be hurt."

Daisukenojo snorted. Tenten glanced at him. 'What's so surprising about that?'

'We're the freak team,' he said bluntly. He raised his voice. 'Yamada-sensei! Do you really think it's safe for anyone to grab her?'

"I think they're just going to have to deal with it, shorty!" he said with malicious glee. "Gai, maybe you could do the honours? Given that you're in the springtime of your youth."

Gai's eyes teared up in joy. 'Of course! I would gladly sacrifice my life to save your student, who so valiantly braved the wil-,'

'Someone. Shut. Him. _Up_,' Ryuu groaned in pain, screwing his eyes further shut.

"Sacrifice won't be necessary, Gai," Yamada said, rubbing his face. "Just don't touch her skin. She uses a defensive technique that can kill pretty easily."

'That's what we're calling it now?' Daisukenojo muttered. Gai nodded and struck a strangely flamboyant pose, darting off into the trees. For a few minutes they travelled in silence interrupted only by tears of inspiration streaming down Rock Lee's face, before Daisukenojo spoke again.

'She's going to barbecue him.'

"Yep."

* * *

Raiku was already in motion when she woke up. She felt curiously warm, and absolutely safe. She exhaled lightly, burying her face further into fabric with a small, contented sound.

"Speedy, you waking up?"

Her good mood evaporated. She grumbled.

"Oh good. Mind telling me what happened?"

'F'got to breathe,' she grumbled screwing her eyes further shut to try and cling to the last vestiges of sleep, hands fisting in a strange-feeling material.

'Who the _hell_ forgets to breathe, toaster?'

She cracked open an eye to squint around her blearily. A perfectly round pair of eyes stared down at her, framed by a terrifyingly shiny black bowl cut.

She stared.

Then she shrieked.

Rock Lee yelped and tried desperately to keep a hold on her as she struggled to get free, screaming loudly. Ryuu's eyes shot open and she caught the movement in her peripheral when he flung a hand out in protective response-

* * *

'This is the worst rescue in the history of Konoha,' Daisukenojo grumped, expression flat. Ryuu walked alongside him, hands in his pockets.

The grey haired boy shrugged. 'At least I got to knock out Rock Lee.'

Might Gai carried his unconscious student with mournful tears streaming down his face, cradling Rock Lee carefully. 'How could you be so lacking in youthful empathy!?'

'Practice,' Ryuu said dryly.

'I'm surprised it was you, not toaster,' Daisukenojo muttered, casting an eye over to Raiku's recently concussed form. 'She usually… y'know. Explodes when she freaks out?'

'She explodes?' Tenten asked from next to them, expression menacing. 'She _explodes_ and you're making Neji-kun carry her?'

'He should be alright, as long as he doesn't make any sudden movements,' Daisukenojo snickered. At the expression on Tenten's face, he looked away hurriedly.

Neji's face was impassive, as it always was, carrying the unconscious Gairano without any apparent difficulty.

'At least she's not heavy,' Ryuu said, perfectly deadpan.

'Yeah, that'll totally make up for the exploding.'

* * *

Raiku woke up slowly this time, since her brain had evidently learned its lesson. A pale shape swam into view as the pounding of her head increased. The unsteady figure of a face made itself known, and she squinted to try and focus. The face was quite beautiful, with the pale eyes of a Hyuuga. But the blurring of its edges made telling gender impossible, roughly until she caught sight of the long hair.

' 'Lo,' she said woozily, tilting her head as best she was able. 'Have we… met?'

'No,' an indistinct voice said. She frowned under the mask, brow wrinkling slightly.

'Your voice… is really deep for a girl…' she mumbled, blinking owlishly, lifting a finger to poke him in the chest. 'Sorta… flatchested, too… arentcha?'

The arms supporting her stiffened, and she dimly heard hysterical laughter, before something dark rushed up to meet her.

* * *

'I cannot approve the use of the Gentle Fist technique on a hapless maiden!' Gai exclaimed, shooting Neji a melodramatically vengeful look. The Hyuuga didn't appear to care.

Daisukenojo wiped a tear of laughter from his eye, leaning on Ryuu for support. 'Brilliant!' he cackled. 'Absolutely brilliant!'

'_And_ he called her a hapless maiden!' Ryuu added, shoulders shaking with repressed laughter.

Yamada coughed, trying to hide his smirk. Neji held the girl with faint distaste, slightly away from his body. Well he was trying to- Raiku was one of the great thrifty members of the Gairano family, and believed in body heat instead of air conditioner. She buried her face in his chest, curling up into a ball as best she was able, exhaling lightly.

"I wouldn't let her face touch your skin," Yamada advised. "That would hurt, get me? Or your hands."

'Consider it done,' Neji said darkly.

Blissfully unaware, Raiku slept on.

* * *

A/N: Look, someone was going to call Neji a girl eventually. At least I mean it lovingly.

Reviews

V Starwind: Neji was totally asking for it. Look at how he dresses!

envysXsin: Sorry I didn't respond to the previous one- I'm incredibly grateful for your criticism and comments, and are indeed honoured that you've chosen to review, and quite staggered by your praise. As for fighting for the fate of the world... See you at sundown. Bring alcohol.


	13. Maternal Terror

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Thanks to my beta, Vanya. I gave you a break yesterday, but now I'm going to work you like a dog. An adored and cherished dog, but a dog nonetheless. Feel appreciated!

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

Raiku awoke in a splendour she was unaccustomed to. In other words, a room without makeshift doors and windows. She also couldn't open her eyes more than a sliver, which was less than ideal, but she could actually feel something other than the rush in her blood. The fact that it was pain was a mild drawback, and at least this time it was only in her head.

She tried to frown, ending up with a mild twitch of her lips. Where was she? And why was her forehead bandaged? This way of waking up was severely overrated in shinobi circles. Granted, the average shinobi woke up to see the tearful face of a suddenly-requited Love Interest.

She paused in realisation. Her eyes slowly slid to her bedside.

_Not Daisukenojo,_ she panicked. _He's too-_

Short? part of her mind volunteered.

_Angry. I was going to say angry._

'This is the second time we've been stuck with her while she sleeps off something that's Yamada-sensei's fault,' Ryuu said in a distinctly bored fashion somewhere beyond her peripheral vision. She almost blacked out again in relief: no Love Interest here then! She was free! Free to live the life of a spinster-

Wait a second. It occurred to her there was something wrong with her priorities.

'Could be worse. It could be us,' Daisukenojo snorted, absently reaching over and tugging a piece of hair out of her face. His own hair instantly lifted off his scalp with the static, and Ryuu snorted at him in amusement.

'You honestly think this sort of crap happens to us, or ever will?'

'I hope not,' Daisukenojo muttered.

'Crazy shit happens around her, and only around her. She's as bad as Uzumaki.'

Something very cold was creeping up her spine, and Raiku sincerely hoped it was realisation. Was it possible that…

She was the Drama catalyst here?

Her eyes widened as much as they could (marginally) as she tried to think back. A freckled face leaned over her, raising an eyebrow and largely ignored. 'Toaster, you with us here?'

She was starting to panic. Improbable hair? Right now, yes. Improbable eyes? Hell yes! Strange abilities!?

Oh sweet god of thunder.

'She's freaking out,' Daisukenojo frowned, hazel eyes flicking over her as her breaths shallowed, jerking a thumb towards the door. 'Go get Yamada-sensei.'

'I really hope you didn't just tell me what to do, Hatori,' Ryuu said coldly.

'You know, you could try to be less of a bastard for once in your life!'

'Maybe if you weren't such a goddamn _moron_ I wouldn't act like one at all!'

'Raiku's no moron and you're mean to her too!'

And she was brought up in arguments? Any second now an Equaliser was going to bust through that door and kill them all.

Any second now.

'_Raiku_ is constantly getting herself into trouble and I'm always the one who helps her out! You call that being mean, huh?'

Her teammates did unexpected favours for her and refused thanks! Granted they refused thanks by being bastards and making her stop wanting to thank them at all, but the principle applied!

'Ouch,' she croaked.

'Shut up, Raiku, we're trying to have a conv-,' Daisukenojo trailed off mid-word and looked back down. 'Toaster? Can you hear me?'

'Yes,' she winced.

'We're at Yamada-sensei's house, because Hyuuga-bastard refused to carry you up to the Gairano compound. Since you called him a girl. That was freaking awesome,' he grinned in recollection. 'You said he was a flat-chested girl with a deep voice! I'm going to tell that story every time I hear his name.'

'What's with you and Hyuugas?' Ryuu asked, leaning into her range of sight from somewhere above her head. His eyes were even more disconcerting upside down. 'First Hinata, now Neji…'

'What's next- the clan head?'

She frowned up at them blearily clearing her throat. 'Why is it,' she rasped. 'That you both argue until it's time to pick on me? Then you suddenly get along- why?'

'Because you're pathetic,' Ryuu explained.

'Because I've got six little brothers and sisters _just _as annoying. Call it reflex,' Daisukenojo shrugged, equally blasé.

She nodded wearily. 'Got it.'

He lowered his voice, glancing around surreptitiously. 'You've gotta watch out for his wife, toaster- she's _insane_. Not insane like you, even, she's just crazy. Got it?'

'Isn't she pregnant?' she asked slowly, brow wrinkling.

He nodded, giving her a dubious look. 'Yeah,' he said, as though his point were very, very obvious. 'And all pregnant people are insane.'

'I don't want to hear about how you're scared of pregnant people again, Hatori,' Ryuu said, glaring.

Raiku watched the conversation being conducted over her head with bemusement, eyes flicking between them as Daisukenojo rolled his eyes.

'I'm not scared of them, it's just freakish. They're one and a half people: it's unnatural!'

'You think pregnant people are unnatural…?' Raiku interjected. Daisukenojo flushed with embarrassment.

'See, when you say it like that it sounds really bad.'

'That's because it is really bad,' Ryuu said dryly.

'Look, if you tell Yamada-sensei that I said that about his wife he'll kill me,' Daisukenojo hissed. 'My life is in your spider-like fingers.'

Raiku lifted her head up to look down at her hands, frowning. 'My fingers are not like spiders…'

'I was talking to Ryuu,' he said, putting a hand on her forehead bandages and pushing her back down forcefully.

Ryuu smirked wickedly.

'Oh hell no,' Daisukenojo said, narrowing his eyes. 'I'll fight you if I have to.'

'Please don't,' Raiku said worriedly. She was promptly ignored.

'Oh really?' Ryuu said, smirk growing even more pronounced. He leaned further over her, shadow falling over her face. Her brow creased even more.

'If you fight you're going to squish me. I feel that's counterproductive to my recovery process,' Raiku offered nervously, shrinking down on the futon.

'Yeah, really,' Daisukenojo said, shifting forward.

'In fact, maybe we should all agree to be friends! Friends, anyone?'

'I'm going to enjoy kicking your ass, Hatori.'

Raiku paused, taking in the scant inches between the faces above her. 'Are you two… going to kiss or something?' she asked with some small measure of doubt. She screwed her eyes shut and prepared for pain.

There was the sound of two boys trying to get as far away from each other as possible as quickly as possible. To be more specific, there was a loud series of scuffles and crashes.

The door slid open very slowly, and all other sound ceased.

'Boys,' a low female voice said cautiously. A woman with dark blonde hair and green eyes leaned in from the hallway, heavy bags and lines of exhaustion under her narrowed green orbs. 'I hope you're not disturbing the patient… You wouldn't disturb the patient… Would you boys?'

Her slow, disjointed sentences had an effect on the two that Raiku would spend the rest of her life trying to emulate. Two pale faces gave subtle signs for 'no', 'never' and 'please spare my life'.

Her eyes narrowed even further, and she resembled nothing less than some sort of grim spectre hanging from the doorframe. 'Maybe… you should go help my husband make lunch…?' she asked softly, eyes dragged from one to the other.

Two slow, cautious nods.

'Good,' she said, so softly it was almost hidden in the breath it took to say it. She moved inside the room fully, allowing them the room to use the door. Raiku noticed, for the first time, that she was heavily pregnant. She was quick, but not always on the uptake. Especially when concussed.

'How _did_ I get a concussion…?' she wondered, frowning. The revelation as to her role could wait until she could confront her father.

'Rock Lee… dropped you,' Yamada's wife, Suzuki said slowly, putting a hand on her covered forehead.

'I don't think you should touch me,' Raiku said, wincing. 'Since you're… pregnant, and all.'

'Yama-kun has told me about your condition,' she said mildly.

'Yama- oh, yeah, married,' Raiku remembered, rolling her eyes at herself. She coughed awkwardly. 'Yes. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.'

The woman sent her a smile. Raiku's skin broke out in goosebumps. 'It's not an inconvenience.'

'Right…' she said slowly, dragging herself up with some screaming of the muscles in her arms. 'Maybe… I should help with lunch too…'

'You should rest,' Suzuki said softly.

'I'd… I'd rather help with lunch,' Raiku began. Anger flashed across Suzuki's face.

'I said you should get some rest!'

Raiku shrunk back, eyes wide. She nodded mutely.

Suzuki smiled. 'Thank you Raiku-chan.'

She nodded again, fingers digging into either side of the futon.

Suzuki straightened and waddled silently from the room. Raiku exhaled heavily in relief, running a shaking hand through her hair. Her electricity, equally terrified of the frightening woman, clung to her hand reassuringly, making the strands stick directly up. Yamada's wife's mood swings were as bad as his were! Possibly worse!

It was official.

She had to escape.

She moved her legs to the side of the futon, shivering as bare skin met cool air. She edged along towards the end, eyes firmly fixed on the door. She reached out for the bag she could see in her peripheral, other hand double checking her mask. She'd had the foresight to pull it up before the exhilaration of her run had made her forget to breathe, so luckily her exposure was at a minimum.

She knew she had to talk to her father about her Drama Level. It had never occurred to her she even _had_ one, but it was increasingly obvious that there were a lot of things she simply hadn't considered. Like Yamada: he'd looked perfect at first glance. Happily married, blissfully in fact. Powerful but not exceptional, former member of ANBU who'd come out relatively unscathed. But then there was his wife.

What a wife.

She wasn't a kunoichi but she was _excessively_ dangerous, coming from an obscure Mist village after Yamada had been posted there. She hadn't read the whole damn report on her teammates, but that had stuck out. Something about instantaneous and hideously painful death upon the exercising of her will.

It just figured that Yamada would go and screw up her Drama Balance like that by marrying some sort of super-weapon.

She timidly reached for her forehead protector, which was looking suspiciously immaculate. She tied it on over her bandages and winced. Obviously Rock Lee had dropped her onto a rock of some kind. She didn't remember that, but there was something else that seemed sort of important that was pressing at the front of her mind…

_She'd called Hyuuga Neji a girl._

Her eyes widened. They'd told her earlier, even teased her about it. But actually remembering it was significantly more traumatising.

There were now two reasons for the Hyuuga family to try and kill her.

She groaned, hitting her forehead in frustration. Stupid stupid stupid! Of course he wasn't a girl, he was just… pretty? No, pretty was a bad word to associate with the shinobi genius. It would inevitably come out and then there'd be three reasons. Beautiful? No. Handsome? Handsome! Handsome was a nice, masculine word that she could attach to him without someone trying to assassinate her for emasculating him! Brilliance!

She paused as something occurred to her, bringing her grand total to two epiphanies that day and well beyond the human norm. 'Maybe it's because I've been around so many high Drama Levels?' she whispered to herself incredulously. It made sense. She'd been born because her mother had done the same thing, so the process must attach itself to someone. Whether it's an unborn child or the person themself in the child's absence?

Raiku took a deep breath to calm herself. Vengeance was an Uchiha thing, not a Gairano thing. She tried to look for the bright side. 'At least I didn't try to compliment his figure,' she said to herself calmly, rubbing her temples.

There was an affronted silence. She closed her eyes.

_Please, God. No._

The door slid open warily. Suzuki's head peered in and partially obstructed the view of green spandex and shiny black hair. 'Raiku-chan, some members of Team Gai are here to speak to you,' she murmured.

'I'm unconscious,' Raiku said instantly.

'But friend, you're speaking! How can you possibly be unconscious?' a friendly voice exclaimed. She could hear the exclamation marks sliding into place.

'I'm… awake… suddenly, thank you,' she said weakly, hanging her head. 'Rock Lee, is it just you and Gai out there? I can't really afford any exposure to Drama Catalysts before I can see my family…'

Rock Lee slid past Suzuki into the room, leaning down to study her with those curiously round eyes. 'No, my brave friend! But Yamada-san has told us all about your valiant efforts that allowed your team to safely cross the desert! We are truly in awe of your abilities!' He nodded enthusiastically, and his eyes shone. She inched back, wary of tears of inspiration.

'Oh… Thank you…' she said awkwardly. He seized her hands, pulling a yelp from her, staring deep into her eyes. That in and of itself was impressive. Her eyes were a direct light source, so staring into them- deeply into them no less- would actually burn the retinas. One more thing she could thank her power for: there would be no soliloquies about her eyes, no romanticisation and no risk.

'I myself cannot use my chakra either! I feel that we are truly kindred spirits, working to overcome our own hardships to better protect Konoha and enjoy the springtime of our youth!'

'Okay,' she said slowly, eyes wide as she tried to process all of what he'd said. 'Who told you that?'

'Ryuu-san!' he answered promptly, giving her hand a light squeeze.

'Okay,' she said, nodding to herself. 'I'm going to murder him. But who else came with you?'

Please let it be Tenten, she thought to herself.

Behind Lee, someone cleared their throat.

What Raiku did next was instinctive, and so while technically her fault, not necessarily her will. She leaned to the side to see around the spandex bodysuit, tilting her head.

Perfectly blank white eyes watched her with a vaguely accusing hostility.

'Raiku-chan?' Lee asked, moving her hands slightly to get her attention. 'Raiku-chan?'

She tugged a hand free, inching it towards her sandal.

'Raiku-chan, no!' he cried as she flung it at the door and a truly stunned Hyuuga Neji.

'The power of obscurity compels you to stop making my life more dramatic!' she exclaimed.

'Raiku-chan, Neji-san carried you here!' Rock Lee protested, instantly trapping her hands in his own again despite her struggles. 'You shouldn't lash out at him!'

'I'm not going to let some greater Plot affect my life! I don't care who I have to avoid or throw shoes at! I've got another one!' she threatened, shooting him an accusing glare.

'Neji-san, I fear that Raiku-chan is still suffering the effects of her concussion!' Lee exclaimed, shooting a worried look over his shoulder. 'We should depart until she is more recovered so that she ceases to aggravate you through footwear!'

'Never!'

'What are you babbling about, Gairano?' Neji asked coldly, crossing his arms across his chest. Unable to throw anything at him, she settled for glowering. The effect was ruined by her forehead protector slide down to cover one eye.

'I'm going home!' she announced, completely failing at any sort of subtlety and crossing into the realm of the painfully obvious. She stood, using Lee's that grip as support. 'I'm not going to be murdered by a Hyuuga for ruining their dignity for the second time!'

Lee sent her a horrified look

'Second Hyuuga, second offence,' she elaborated.

He nodded in relief. 'But Neji-san is a very forgiving man!'

Raiku's eyes slid over to the man in question. If looks could kill, she'd never have to worry about electrocuting anyone again.

'Leaving!' she announced firmly, picking up her pack. She wasn't dizzy and she wasn't nauseous. She was also convinced that if she told herself that enough, it would become true.

Suzuki trapped her at the door. The air dropped in temperature as the thin arm slammed out to hit the doorframe between Neji and Raiku's faces. Raiku's was the only one that displayed real shock- Neji just blinked and widened his eyes slightly.

'We made lunch,' Suzuki reminded her with kindness her arm failed to imply. 'You should eat.'

'I think I should go, actually,' Raiku said cautiously, eyes darting between her hand and her face.

Aforementioned face darkened.

'Lunch!' Raiku said brightly. 'I'd be happy to!'

'In that case we will no longer impinge upon your bountiful hospitality!' Gai exclaimed, and tiny sparkles danced in the air around his teeth. Even Raiku didn't do that on her own. 'Farewell, sweet maid-'

'I _insist_,' Suzuki hissed to him, eyes burning, the bags under her eyes suddenly incredibly pronounced. Even Neji recoiled slightly, but Gai managed to cower away with impressive speed.

'Of course!' he said, from a very, very respectable distance, tears of fear in his eyes. 'Anything the lady requires!'

And that was how Raiku found herself sitting at a table with her captain, a Hyuuga, Might Gai, Rock Lee and the scariest woman alive.

The Hyuuga glowered at her as if it were her fault. And yes, the bruise on his neck was technically her fault, if not, as previously stipulated, her will. Might Gai and Rock Lee discussed Yamada's unique brand of taijutsu with avid enthusiasm: Yamada's style being 'kill them, kill them good'.

Ryuu joined them after she'd been seated awkwardly under the hostile scrutiny of the Hyuuga for a few minutes, cupping his hand around her ear to whisper in it. 'Check out the kitchen.'

She blinked owlishly, and leaned to the side.

Daisukenojo sent her a pleading look, trapped in an apron with frills on it. He held a spatula in one agonisingly embarrassed hand. The spatula, in its defence, was quite embarrassed too. Frills? That was simply poor taste.

She quietly excused herself and made her way into the kitchen, staring at him. 'What are you doing?' she hissed.

He shrugged helplessly. 'She told me to!'

'Don't you have four sisters to practice resisting on?!' she demanded quietly, gesticulating wildly. She felt the Hyuuga continue to glare at her through the wall, and tried her best to ignore it.

'She looked at me all… weird!' he hissed. 'Like she was going to cry!'

She stared at him. '… Women cry all the time!'

'Not around me, they don't! My mother always made damn sure I wouldn't let a girl cry around me!' He flushed at the revelation, and to her shock, started to fidget. 'You… You're meant to look after girls,' he admitted quietly, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. 'And since my dad died, I've been looking after all of them. So I guess it's just… habit?' he offered helplessly, staring at his feet.

'You never look after me,' she grumbled, doing her best to ignore the back story.

He looked up. 'What?' he asked, brow wrinkling in confusion.

'Nothing,' she sighed. She held a hand out. 'Give me the spatula. I'll see what I can do.'

She resisted the urge to roll up her sleeves, turning and staring at the kitchen stubbornly. She wouldn't be the first Gairano to ever fail in the face of domesticity.

Surely it couldn't be that much more complicated than instant miso.

* * *

A/N: I remember thinking that once. Foolish, foolish days.

Reviews:

V: You'll be reading it in your inbox from now on.

envysXsin: I'm starting to provide backstories, but given how avidly my character's avoided them I can only provide them in short bursts. Until I create a proper context, that is, so please be patient and I won't disappoint you. I love Daisukenojo too and he's getting more attention as we get closer to the chuunin exams. And yes, I may have thrown him into an apron with frills on, but he was asking for it. Your praise is... wonderful. Thank you so much for both that and your advice, because you've inspired me to write more and write better. And like I said- you can have France, but the rest of the universe we'll have to negotiate about.


	14. Attention and Broken Fingers

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: In this chapter Raiku is trodden on, threatened and singled out for a vendetta, and smiles pretty much the whole time.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

'Allow me to see if I get this straight,' he father said slowly, standing in front of her as she tried in vain to make her long legs fit the tiny desk. 'You were at Yamada-san's house.'

'Yes,' she confirmed, fidgeting uncomfortably under the soot.

'And you… offered to help with lunch to escape the grasp of a Hyuuga,' he said, nodding to himself, hands clasped behind him at the small of his back, shoulders perfectly squared. 'A wise course of action. However,' he added, a small muscle under his eye twitching slightly. '_When_ you actually tried to help with lunch…'

'The rice cooker exploded,' she finished helpfully. She winced at the look he threw her.

'After that,' he gritted out through his teeth, hands tightening on his own wrists. 'You then… fled, Yamada-san's house as he pursued you… At which point you found yourself on top of a building?'

'…Sounds about right,' she said evasively.

'When Yamada-san told you to come down, you refused. He then _threatened_ you with entry into the incredibly dangerous and _incredibly dramatic chuunin exams_,' he said, ending in an enraged hiss.

'… Yes,' she admitted, sliding down in her seat.

'And you _still refused_.'

'…This sounds a lot worse than it is,' she began reluctantly, but he cut her off.

'No, I don't think that this _could_ be any worse, Raiku, not unless you'd stripped and gone to hug the Hokage!' he exploded, hands thudding down onto the desk in front of her. 'Do you have any idea what you've done!?' he demanded as she shrunk back. 'You've completely destroyed the balance! You were _not_ supposed to be in these chuunin exams, because we have spent decades deciphering the Kyuubi Plot and it does not, in any way, involve you. These chuunin exams however, are involved, and so when you were signed up for them you completely ruined _everything_ that we have built! We can't read the Plot anymore, Raiku, because it's changed, and it's changed because you're in it!'

Raiku flinched as that same, curiously leaden feeling settled in her stomach. She couldn't bring herself to meet his enraged gaze. Her father was a gentle man, but in his mind lay the same segment that hers possessed- the part that was entirely Gairano.

And that part did not take kindly to being disobeyed.

She wanted to bring up her suspicions, her fear that she was in fact more a Catalyst than Gairano and that she would only continue to bring Drama to the people she cared for, bring conflict and pain to her friends and family. But now wasn't the time. In the face of the family's anger, she was beginning to believe there would never be a time.

'I'm sorry,' she said instead, and felt shame clog her throat.

He jerked back from her so violently it resembled recoiling more than anything else, a shaking hand coming up to cover his eyes, failing to reach and simply lying suspended in the air between them. 'I love you, Raiku,' he said quietly, almost distantly, stretching out to put his hand on her head, ignoring the painful jolt as his skin came too close to hers. 'Remember that no matter how angry I get, I love you. But I'm not always proud of you.'

She nodded, eyes downcast.

'We can fix this,' he muttered to himself, removing his hand. 'It simply needs time to correct itself once you've been removed.'

He turned back to her.

'Raiku, you need to fail the exams.'

She sagged in relief. 'Oh good,' she sighed. 'I thought this was going to be hard.'

* * *

She tried to hide her smile when two genin she didn't recognise refused to let them even enter the exam room. Daisukenojo glowered from several inches below her line of sight, though she noticed with some small amount of annoyance that he was going to outgrow her soon. Above her own eye level Ryuu's cold, dispassionate gaze flicked over the doors and the people congregating there, and between the two of them she found a feeling not unlike security. Flanked by two people who had proven that not only did they not care about her abnormalities but in fact cared so little as to tease her gave her a sense of belonging she was rapidly growing accustomed to. Daisukenojo moved forward to say something to the genin, but an arm flashed in front of Raiku to grasp his shoulder. The volatile redhead turned, a snarl ready on his face, cut off by Ryuu's pointed look.

Reluctantly he settled back, crossing his arms over his chest.

Ryuu dropped his own arm, shifting the grass in his mouth thoughtfully as he observed the growing scene. They were early, and in the plain, brightly lit hall there seemed little sense of urgency. Raiku adjusted the edge of her mask, glad for the growing cool of autumn, and briefly considered just …

Never going in at all.

It wasn't uncommon for genin to die during these exams, and while she knew she had to fail, she found herself reluctant to either die or allow her teammates to die. She mused briefly on her attachment to them and found it lacking in the profound at her initial glance, and thus of minimal risk.

'This isn't where we're supposed to be,' Ryuu murmured into her ear, letting her know with a flick of his eyes towards Daisukenojo that she should pass on the message. She did so and responded to his questioning look with a jerk of her head towards Ryuu.

Ryuu let his eyes linger meaningfully on the sign.

'It's the right place,' she whispered in his ear in confusion, looking at the number.

'No,' he answered with a slight shake of his head. 'It's not.' His lips twitched upwards as he looked down at both of them, a curious look in his eyes. After a moment, she nodded, turning back to face the door.

Daisukenojo's suspicion abated at that same look, and he grudgingly turned away, dismissing Ryuu with a jerk of his head.

Raiku couldn't help the smile that split across her face, creasing her eyes warmly.

Ryuu looked down over her head at Daisukenojo questioningly. He shrugged, elbowing her lightly in the side.

'We're acting like a team!' she said proudly, setting her hands on her hips. 'Finally!'

Ryuu exhaled lightly in a sound that could have passed for an amused one, while Daisukenojo just jabbed her harder and accompanied the gesture with a roll of his eyes.

There was a strange squeak. She turned her head to look over her shoulder, frowning in exasperation. 'Did either of you hear that?' she asked the boys, eyebrow twitching.

'The squeak? Sure,' Daisukenojo shrugged.

She narrowed her eyes, scanning the plain hallway and the overshadowed alcove leading to the stairs. 'I _know_ I've heard that somewhere before…' she muttered to herself, resisting the sudden, violent urge to destroy the wall that hid the stairs themselves from view.

Ryuu tilted his head. 'I think …' he said slowly. Daisukenojo sniggered immaturely, ignored by both of them. 'That that squeak… is because of you,' he finished eventually.

'Me?' she blinked in surprise, pointing to herself. 'Because of me?'

'I've heard that squeak five times,' he explained. 'And only when you've been here.'

'Five? I've only heard it twice,' she muttered.

'My ears are much better. C'mon,' he said, dropping his voice to be inaudible but all but those two. 'We need to go to the right floor.'

One of the genin guarding the door, bandages stretched across his nose, winked at her roguishly as she turned back. Puzzled, she looked to Ryuu for an explanation and found his expression murderous.

'Come on,' he repeated, turning stiffly on his heel. Raiku blinked and threw a somewhat distracted wave at the genin in that curious grey uniform, following after him.

The walls shook slightly as they walked towards the door to the outer stairs, and Plot oozed.

She flinched, paling. 'Gotta go gotta go gotta go…' she muttered to herself, speeding up just as Uzumaki Naruto rounded the corner to the fake exam room.

It was when she reached the real room Raiku realised just how deep the trouble she was in was.

A room full of shinobi from almost every country, all terrifying and tough looking greeted her. Condescending smirks mixed with malicious gazes until it was simply a sea of unwelcome faces around the rows of desks leading down to the front, and she could already feel her youth weighing her down in their eyes.

'Got any … y'know… left?' Daisukenojo muttered into her ear, not moving his eyes from the crowd. His short stature was earning him sniggers.

She nodded mutely.

'Wanna get rid of the competition?' he joked weakly.

She turned her horrified gaze on him, pulling back her fist and letting fly.

Ryuu leaned back to look at Daisukenojo stumbling back, holding his jaw. 'It was a joke!' Daisukenojo exclaimed, somewhat muffled by his own hand. 'Joke, toaster, people make those sometimes!'

'Nice,' Ryuu smirked to her.

'Don't you ever joke about that,' she muttered, shooting him a serious look. 'Ever.'

'You three… you're rookies just graduated from the academy, right?' someone asked- drawled, she corrected- from their left. She glanced over with a carelessness that surprised even her. Ryuu didn't bother.

A young man with almost femininely fine features, glasses and long pale hair tied into a low ponytail faced them, hands in his pockets. He wore the headband of Konoha, but his eyes were colder than any shinobi she'd seen prior.

She blinked at him.

'Yeah,' Daisukenojo said, siphoning some of Ryuu's natural boredom to his aid. 'What about it?'

'Such cute faces… You're all still messing around, huh?'

Raiku's eyes flicked to him for longer this time. 'Why… does face matter to a shinobi?' she puzzled.

'It doesn't,' Ryuu dismissed, yawning with deliberately offensive flippancy. 'He's trying to psych you out because you look like a wimp.'

'I… I am a wimp,' she pointed out.

'Yeah. But he's not scary,' he explained, smirking coldly.

'It does matter,' the pale haired man corrected, sly eyes flicking between them and taking in the bruise on Daiskenojo's jaw. 'Look around you.'

'Ryuu-kun, no!' Raiku hissed, grabbing his hand as it started to rise. 'You do not cause alkalosis in strangers!'

He shot her a bemused look, lowering his hand.

The pale-haired man sighed. 'I'm Yakushi Kabuto. I'm just giving you a warning now, since everyone's tense before the exams? I'm not trying to psych you out.'

'Thank… you?' Raiku offered tentatively, giving him a friendly eye crease. 'I'm sorry for my teammate- he's tense toooooh that's my hand,' she broke off mid word into another, looking down at the hand still intertwined with Ryuu's, grasped tight enough to hurt. 'Yes, okay, thank you for warning us Yakushi-san!' she squeaked, desperately trying to pry her hand free.

He shot her an exasperated, if amused look. 'Would you like some more help? It must be frightening entering the exams so soon after graduation.' His smile was kind, and the Plot hanging off him malignant, festering half-in half-out of his body with the occasional outburst of a terror-filled voice escaping.

'I don't think I'll pass, so no- _I have a hand, and its name is pain_,' she whimpered as Ryuu's grip tightened even more.

'Sure,' Daisukenojo answered Yakushi, stepping forward. 'Sounds like a good idea. That's it you guys are done handholding,' he added, jerking a thumb at them.

Yakushi smiled at them reassuringly.

'Daisuke-kun,' Raiku whispered, eyes wide and earnest. 'I don't think we should listen to him.'

He raised an eyebrow.

'Well,' she swallowed thickly as she felt the bones in her hand move against each other in a distinctly unnatural way. 'He may have to fight us later… yeah? So… if he gives us bad information then he improves his own chances.'

Yakushi watched the quiet exchange with raised eyebrows. 'Are you… alright?' he asked, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly.

Inside his Plot a woman screamed.

'Yes Yakushi-san,' she said, doing her best to bow without moving her hand. 'But I think we should take our seats.'

The pressure alleviated slightly. Good sign! She was on the right track.

'After all,' she added hastily. 'We wouldn't want to miss out for something as dumb as not having seats, right?'

The pressure remained the same. Damnit! She strived to think of something she might have missed. 'Thank you for offering to help us Yakushi-san!' she smiled sweetly. 'I'm sorry we didn't arrive soon enough to benefit from your experience.'

The pressure almost vanished. Yakushi seemed flattered, smiling with equal happiness. 'Just come to me if you need help… What was your name, I'm sorry?' he asked mildly.

Oh, there went the metacarpals. No fingers for her. 'We're team Yamada,' she smiled, improvising. She used the crippling grip on her hand to steer Ryuu away, pulling Daisukenojo with her before he could persist and ask for her real, specific name.

Ryuu cast her a dark look as the three found a space, Daisukenojo moving to sit directly in front of them in the only other spare seat they could immediately locate. 'You want to explain to dear Daisuke the problem with that guy's advice any louder, toaster?' he gritted out.

'My hand!' she exclaimed, gingerly rubbing her heavily bruised fingers. 'You killed my hand!'

'Focus, toaster!'

'I needed that! I only have two!' she lamented, sniffing slightly. 'That… that hurt so bad…'

'If I fix your hand, will you shut the hell up?' Daisukenojo grimaced. She nodded. He held out his own freckled, square hand, pulling her gloved, thin one towards him. 'You're such a wimp,' he muttered, not without affection, as a pale glow surrounded his fingers.

'I didn't know you knew any healing techniques,' Ryuu observed, leaning forward in his seat. Daisukenojo shrugged, pinching her skin through her glove as she stretched her tingling fingers.

'My mother's a medic, and since everyone in my family has really good chakra control _and_ we're always getting into fights, she thought it would be a good idea to teach me this stuff. Sort of like you two.'

Raiku was so accustomed to the guilt of hiding things she no longer actually felt it. She nodded in understanding. 'It must be really nice… to know you can fix people,' she murmured.

'I prefer breaking them,' he grinned. She blinked, looking up from her hand to his face.

'Do you really?' she asked, tilting her head slightly.

He opened his mouth to reply, but a loud exclamation cut him off.

'My name is Uzumaki Naruto! I'm not going to lose to any of you!' Naruto cried from the back of the room, pointing to the crowds at large.

Raiku flinched. Behind him Yamanaka Ino picked a loud, aggravated fight with Haruno Sakura, the girl who had glared so angrily at Raiku the day of graduation.

She straightened on the bench to catch a glimpse of the other recommended rookie genin, and caught Hinata hurriedly ducking out of sight with…

'A squeak!' she cried triumphantly, surging up in her seat to point at Hinata.

Every face in the room turned towards her with dubious and in some cases openly hostile expressions.

'Toaster, sit down,' Ryuu said quietly, hiding his face in his hand. In the seat in front of her, Daisukenojo went scarlet with secondhand embarrassment, sliding down out of sight.

'It was YOU!' Raiku continued on, pointing at Hinata, apparently immune to awkwardness in her moment of triumph. Since Hinata was hiding behind her Aburame teammate, this was somewhat awkward. His brow furrowed above black sunglasses that completely hid his eyes, and the high collar made any other indication of emotion impossible to see. 'YOU'RE the one that's been hiding from me!'

'I have perpetrated no such action,' Aburame said. She flicked her hand dismissively.

'Not you, Aburame-san, Hinata-san!'

There was another squeak.

'Oh come on!' she exclaimed in frustration. 'I can totally see you!' She vanished with a loud yelp of surprise as Ryuu yanked her savagely downwards, almost cracking her head on the table in front of her.

-

Aburame half-turned to look at his teammate, raising his eyebrows. She went scarlet under his and every other rookie's scrutiny. 'I-I…' she began in embarrassment, trailing off abashedly.

Kiba rested a hand on her head, ruffling her hair. 'It's a secret, so back off!' he grinned.

-

Raiku shoved her way free of the bench, landing in one of the aisles on steady feet and turning on her heel to face the rookies, striding towards them quickly. 'Hinata-san?' she asked, leaning around the Aburame to try and catch a glimpse of her. 'Hinata-san? I'm sorry I yelled, but I do know you're there,' she frowned in confusion, taking a step around the far taller boy.

His face was overshadowed. 'You both use me as some accessory,' he muttered.

'Hinata-san…?' she asked slowly, moving to stand between the Aburame and the crowd, placing her closer to Hinata.

A dark shape, moving so quick as to be a blur, darted between her and the Aburame. She blinked in surprise, head instantly following it and making it a discernable shape-

'That shinobi… looks like a porcupine,' she observed. Another sped past her to follow the one that was after Yakushi, and she secretly hoped that they would kill him.

The woman's scream echoed in her ears.

The boy trod on her foot heavily- probably on purpose- and she gave a brief, incoherent exclamation, hopping on one foot and cursing to herself in a distinctly undignified way. She narrowed her eyes spitefully at his back, growling under her breath as she clutched her foot. He was heavy, and he was going to _pay._

She turned to give up and pursue it another time just as another blur, resolving it as a lovely girl with dark hair when her eyes instinctively traced it, moved to dart in front of her. If he couldn't pay, she wasn't one to hold a grudge.

At least, not a specific grudge.

She stuck her injured foot out casually.

The girl was almost fast enough to dodge, but Raiku was, after all, as fast as lightning.

_Just remember to breathe this time_, Raiku told herself cheerfully, smiling down at the girl mildly. 'I'm sorry, Sound-nin,' she said cheerfully, rubbing the back of her head in feigned sheepishness. 'But I don't think that three on one is fair, do you?'

And your teammate trod on my toe, she added mentally. In this situation, the team must always answer for the individual. Personal vendettas are a very, very forbidden zone. Indistinct ones aren't.

The girl snarled up at her in instantaneous outrage, jumping nimbly to her feet and sending a fist flying towards her.

At that exact moment Raiku had an epiphany.

She was a new part of this Uzumaki plot, and so she was allowed to be sort of tough. She was naturally a wimp, but she was a hard worker and Yamada worked them harder! Success and validation.

She caught the girl's fist in her own hand, tilting her head in a way she felt conveyed friendliness. 'I… think we should wait until the exams to fight, yeah?' Something slammed into her palm and made the bones vibrate painfully several seconds after she caught the hand, and the girl shrieked as something far more inconvenient surged into her through her clenched fingers through the microscopic holes in Raiku's glove, designed for that purpose. For her part, Raiku's eyebrow twitched and she gritted her teeth to stop from cursing yet again.

'You should calm down, Sound-nin,' Raiku said, forcing that cheerful smile as the girl's knees shook. 'There's… no exit wound when you're completely insulated, yeah?'

A gasp rippled through the rookies as the first porcupine-nin lashed out at Yakushi, and Raiku turned to look at the two fighting. Yakushi was standing back, unscathed, while the other stood in a distinctly offense-based position. She raised a quizzical eyebrow, and understood as the glass in Yakushi's glasses frames cracked and shattered.

'That's weird,' she frowned, turning back to the girl just in time to see her other fist flying towards her nose.

It was becoming clear that while a great many things were not in fact her fault, Raiku had, at the very least, some bad karma. Ryuu's arm shot up from his position in the aisle preparing to follow Raiku, and wrenched backwards.

The girl went flying headfirst through the air in his direction, pelting over his head to land somewhere in the crowd.

Raiku leaned forward to follow her progress. 'Thanks Ryuu-kun!' she smiled. 'I didn't want to get in trouble so soon!'

His face was livid. Wordlessly he pointed back to their seats. She slumped, sighing, turning in surprise at the sound of retching. 'He threw up?' Sakura said worriedly, and moved forward.

Raiku blinked as Yakushi remained on all fours, looking up at the porcupine-nin who was apparently responsible. Naruto and Sakura ran to his side to grasp his arms and give him support. 'I'm fine,' he croaked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

'Really?' the foremost Sound-nin asked in a rasp, tilting his head. Coupled with his wide, visible eye, Raiku felt it made him look like a spastic owl. As the spastic broom, she felt an instant kinship. 'You're not as good as I thought for a veteran who took the exams four years running. Write _this_ in your card: the three from the hidden village of Sound will definitely become chuunins.'

'Unless…' Raiku said slowly, flinching as his gaze transferred to her instantly. 'That girl over there is seriously hurt.' She gave a nervous laugh as his eye narrowed on her face.

The girl struggled to her feet, breathing heavily. Her heart ran faster than it ever had before, and for some reason she was getting a sympathetic look from a girl with white eyes. 'You… I will definitely kill during the exams,' she hissed to Raiku as the genin parted for her gaze to fully reach her.

Raiku didn't react as expected, as expected. She scratched the back of her head again. 'I look forward to seeing who is stronger, Sound-nin,' she said pleasantly, giving her a thumbs up. 'But you shouldn't rely on your speed to beat me: I'm pretty fast!' She paused, expression becoming worried. 'You should try to ground yourself- you have an entry wound on your hand, but no exit wound. Until the exit is established, you're going to be hurt more.'

'_Gairano. Ass. Here. Now_.'

She opened her eyes wide, looking at Ryuu. 'I'm sorry Ryuu!' she said worriedly, taking a few steps towards him. 'But I wanted to know why Hinata-san-,'

There was an explosion of smoke in the front of the room. 'Quiet you punks!' someone barked, stepping out of the haze. Dressed in a black trenchcoat and grey uniform, the urban legend that was Ibiki stood in front of a group of shinobi in the same grey uniform, all smirking. Two harsh scars split his face, one across the lips on the left and one reaching for his cheekbone on the right. She wondered if the bandanna-cross-forehead protector hid any more.

'Sorry to keep you waiting,' he smirked, dark eyes bordering on the predatory and staring from a harsh, angular face. 'I am the examiner of the first test of the Chuunin Selection Exam, Morino Ibiki.'

There was something wrong with her family's taste in friends, Raiku realised, staring at the familiar features of 'Uncle Morino'.

Something very, very wrong.

* * *

A/N: Ah, Raiku. You had to win at something, some time.

Reviews:

Anonymous (I'm pretty sure you're actually envysXsin): Daisukenojo was asking for it too... it occurs to me that's my principle defence against every sort of emasculation I put a character through. Most excellent. Thankyou for praising my writing, as I struggle constantly to improve and sometimes fear I don't. I'm sorry I didn't update yesterday, but the next few chapters require research, as they fall within an actual Naruto timeline. Would you take partial custody of the universe? Say every second weekend?

V: I'll show _you_ spaces. Seriously, they're totally in this chapter. Promise.


	15. Glass and Mindfuck

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Yet again there is no beta for this chapter, unsurprisingly since this is the second in a day I've put up for you people. In this chapter Raiku gets hit on and subdued.

However, congratulations!

If you're reading this you have successfully made it to the beginning of some sort of recognisable- and interesting- plot! The Chuunin Exams! You've hung in there long enough to reach the actual content!

I'll give you some, I promise. You know I'm good for it!

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

Raiku bit the skin between thumb and pointer finger to stop herself from openly giggling in relieved glee. This was too perfect!

Upon the paper in front of her was a series of questions so difficult she would have had _no_ chance of answering even if she wanted to pass!

The relief bubbled up inside her and created giddiness, and her shoulders shook with repressed laughter.

The sound of pencils scratching industriously on paper was music to her ears.

She couldn't pass! Ever, from the looks of it! Again, the thought idly occurred to her that there was something wrong with her priorities. She settled back in her chair and folded her arms behind her head, preparing to relax through the exams.

She hazarded a glance over to Ryuu and found him… deep in concentration?

Her right arm slowly made its way down onto the page. She watched in utmost horror as it picked up a pencil. This was especially offensive for someone who was left handed. Ibiki had said he'd punish anyone caught cheating, and as he was the head of the ANBU Interrogation and Torture squad, this was no laughing matter!

There was abruptly an answer that looked correct on her page. She shot Ryuu a hateful glare as her hand was left to its own devices again.

This was not good. He was very determined to pass, clearly. He must have used one of his more subtle techniques to get a look at someone's answers, she assumed. She rubbed out the answer the second he looked back to his own page, hiding it with her arm and pretending to write.

"If this person throws this kunai-," she stopped reading mid-sentence and let her head fall forwards onto the desk. This was going to be a _maths_ question.

Screw that. She'd fail under her own power.

Her shoulder itched suddenly, and she reached a hand up to scratch it irritably, pulling her hand away to find grains of… sand? Sand on her glove?

She forced back a groan at the thought; if there was sand in her clothes it would melt upon contact with her skin and fuse to the fabric when she took it off. Sand! Of all the horrible things in the world it just _had_ to be sand! She hated sand, though she'd never felt any particular enmity towards it until right this second. She absently started to pour the grains from hand to hand, flicking them back into place when they- quite rudely and for some reason not all that inconspicuously- tried to escape.

She poured it onto her desk and started playing noughts and crosses with it.

Something slammed into the desk next to her elbow and her hand instinctively slammed down to hide her distraction. She closed her eyes and cringed as the sand became gooey and far, far hotter than it should have. A thin tendril of smoke escaped between her fingers as the desk panicked and the sand apologised hysterically for melting so unexpectedly.

She opened her eyes to look at the offending spot to find a thin steel ruler, connecting to an examiner's arm, connecting unsurprisingly to a shoulder, neck, and a head. A head with a face with bandages stretching across… the… nose?

Her eyes widened in surprise when the examiner gave her a familiar roguish wink, grinning. His grin spread at the absolutely scandalised look on her face. How old was he?! He was closer to twenty than ten, and not because he was approaching it!

'Eyes on your paper,' he said smugly. Jaw dropped, she managed to give him a look that combined scandal, horror and disbelief. He moved past with a distinctly jaunty spring in his step, and she moved her hand from the desk slowly. Sand was now glass, cooling rapidly once separated from her hand.

And now her glove had melted glass on it. She bit back yet another groan, trying in futility to flick some of it off her. Sand… who brought sand into an exam room anyway?

A kunai slammed with impossible speed onto the paper of the man next to her, provoking a chorus of mild screams as it flew past. The shinobi stood, shaking in fear and anticipation. 'What... what was that about?' he asked, wide-eyed.

The man with the bandages smirked coldly. 'Five strikes and you're out. You just failed the exam.'

'What?' the young man demanded, stumbling back until the backs of his knees hit the seat. 'It can't be!'

'You and your teammates will leave the room immediately,' the examiner continued on ruthlessly, raising a hand to point at him, making sure there could be no ambiguity about the offender. Raiku stared up at the unfortunate cheater, eyes almost as wide as his. It was clear he was being made an example of, so that anyone else cheating would be frightened and make mistakes, allowing themselves to be caught.

She looked hastily at her own paper, relieved to see Ryuu hadn't used her own arm to answer any more questions while she wasn't looking, and looked back up.

Grudgingly, two other shinobi stood with tense frames and expressions, moving into the aisles and towards the door while the offender simply stood in shock for a moment before following, arms limp at his sides.

'Candidate number twenty three- fail,' another grey-clad examiner barked.

'Numbers twenty seven and forty three- fail!' yet another added.

One of the cheaters attempted to stay at his desk and was immediately seized by two _almost_ lightning-fast examiners, who proceeded to drag him out the doors, screaming and protesting the entire way.

'No!' another shouted, slamming his hand onto his desk as he stood. 'There's no way! Who says I cheated five times? Where's your proof!?'

Raiku winced, sliding down to make herself less conspicuous and less likely to be bled on. No one was meant to contradict Ibiki's squad. Ever. But this shinobi wore a Sand forehead-protector, so he couldn't know that…

A Konoha-nin at the front of the room with almost as little of his face showing as hers smirked, his exposed mouth bearing a sadistic hint that the bandages over his eyes would otherwise have hidden as the accused recklessly continued on. 'How can you keep track of all of us!?' he demanded, the telltale nervous sweat breaking out on his forehead as something in his brain quietly mentioned that this was a really, really _bad_ idea… 'You got the wrong guy!' he exclaimed in addition, eyes narrowing. 'How do you know I wasn't just-,'

The covered examiner moved so quickly Raiku checked his skin for exposed sparks, moving the angry young man free of his seat and slamming him into a wall in less than a second, elbow pressed into his trachea and the other hand stuck with infuriating casualness in his pocket. 'Sorry, _friend_,' he said, smirking in a way that told everyone he wasn't actually sorry at all. 'But we were chosen for this examination because we don't _make_ mistakes like that. You don't even-,' his arm pressed tighter into the struggling man's neck, '_blink_ without us knowing about it. We're the best, and you're history.'

He dropped his arm to let the gasping man slide to the ground, tucking the hand back in his pocket. 'Now get out. Oh, and take your teammates with you,' he added, smirk growing.

Raiku was sincerely glad she hadn't been cheating. The bandaged man was watching her like a hawk in a way that made it seem like he was daring her to do something _just_ so he could drag her out, and she swallowed hard. This was not good. This was very, very not good.

'Fifty nine- fail.'

'Numbers thirty three and nine- fail!'

The calling of offenders had begun with full force, interrupting the exam every few minutes with knowing smirks and combat-ready tenseness as the examiners prepared to physically remove those that resisted.

Raiku was even gladder she didn't want to pass. She'd have to cheat in order to do so, and it was clear she wouldn't have stood a chance.

'Number forty one! Fail!'

'Thirty five and sixty two- _fail_.'

She was beginning to be able to pick the examiner by how he gleefully dismissed someone. The words were pretty much the same, but where the sadistic emphasis lay on the sentence was pretty telling.

There was a yelp and a crash as someone hesitated to leave. She found herself wanting to test their awareness by sending the bandaged and inappropriately flirtatious man a rude gesture, but figured that would be an instant expulsion. And if they tried to force her out, oh no, _that_ part of her would like that at all.

She looked down at her test and silently freaked out, trying desperately to rub out the answers that had appeared there. At the side of the room, the bandaged man broke into equally silent laughter.

_Why can't I just fail this in peace!?_

It shouldn't be this hard to fail something, especially not on purpose! She'd failed plenty of times by accident, surely this was meant to be easier!

The crosshairs of the universe aligned…

'Well,' Ibiki announced. 'Looks like we've already dropped the incompetent ones.' Instantly every pencil paused, some mid-letter, except for hers which was steadily congealing in the glass she'd thrown it into. Beseechingly the tiny drop of glass oozed towards her as it quickly solidified. She winced as a particularly powerful image of a drop of glass forming hands and saying 'mama' occurred to her. The glass had been molten in her grip, as it was simply melted sand. It was burnt into the table in an imprint of the centre of her palm when Ibiki took up position at the front of the room, scarred face split with a grin. She stared at the man who'd seen fit to bestow upon her a set of razor wires at the age of five, and smiled nervously.

'I will now give the problem… since forty five minutes have already passed. I will now give the tenth question!' he said, raising his voice to make sure he was heard- even though he knew damn well everybody would listen to him as though their lives depended on it. 'Yes,' he added slowly, smirking to himself. She knew that look! She'd seen it shortly before he'd hung her by her ankles over a river!

She sunk further down in her seat.

'But, before that, there is one thing I must tell you. There will be one special rule for this last question.'

There was a trick in here somewhere; she knew it instantly. He had that look, that look that screamed "mindfuck!" and granted, he wore it most of the time, but since he was wearing it when talking about conditions it made it a certainty.

She narrowed her eyes.

Someone came in through the doors and Ibiki simply smirked, giving a brief sound of amusement. 'You're lucky,' he informed the Sand-nin, who had returned just in time. 'Your puppet show didn't have to go to waste.' The boy's face creased in anger, the strange purple marks making it seem somehow surreal, as though his face were in fact the mask. Ibiki shrugged. 'Oh well. Sit down.'

He waited until the order was obeyed, and took a step forward, placing his hands in the pockets of that ominous black trenchcoat. 'I will now explain,' he said again.

'This is… a hopeless rule,' he said, eyes sliding over to pin her with his gaze. She brightened. Things were looking up!

'First,' he said, turning from the window to face them. 'You are going to choose if you take the tenth problem or not.'

Raiku grinned evilly, taking care not to let it reach her eyes. She tensed to stand and walk- run, screaming- out of the room, and found she couldn't move.

Ryuu's head was bowed in concentration again. She paled, eyes unwillingly dragging back to Ibiki, who was being interrupted and questioned by yet another Sand-nin. A beautiful blonde girl with stubborn dark eyes and a mesh shirt vanishing into a purple one clenched her fists. Her hair was bound into four coarse ponytails, the Sand forehead protector around her neck. 'Choose? So what happens if we don't take the tenth problem!?'

Ibiki smirked. 'If you choose not to take it… your points will be reduced to zero. In other words- you will _fail_. Your two other teammates will fail along with you.'

Raiku strained as hard as she could to try and escape her chair. Yes! That was _exactly_ what she wanted! Failure, sweet, sweet failure! Whispers and questions broke out at this announcement, but for Raiku, who still couldn't move. She managed to drag her gaze to Ryuu, who was staring at her with his eyes narrowed, hands in that goddamn seal under the desk. She tried to convey through telepathy that she was going to _murder_ him in the most horrible way she could think of, but failed.

'And here is the other rule,' Ibiki continued. 'If you choose to take it and you get it wrong…' His eyes hardened. 'You will lose the privilege to take the Chuunin Exam forever!' The room immediately fell into stunned silence.

_Yes!_

Raiku tried to lunge to her feet and felt something that felt… very, tragically important in her body twinge alarmingly as the air around her simply refused to budge.

Kiba lunged to his feet and she was immediately envious, though not of what he did next. He point at Ibiki, glowering. 'What kind of dumb rule is that!?' he demanded. 'There are people here who have taken the Chuunin Exam in the past!' The dog on his head barked for some reason. Probably in agreement, but she didn't speak dog.

Ibiki gave a low chuckle.

She winced. Oh, chuckling. He was having fun, which meant there was a big, big trick here.

'You were unlucky,' he informed Kiba, face darkening with sadistic glee. 'This year I make the rules. That is why I gave you the option of quitting. Those who are not confident can choose not to take it, and take the exam next year, or the year after that.' He chuckled again, and gathering that chuckling meant something very, very bad, the rest of the room winced with her this time.

'Let us begin,' he said darkly. 'Those who will not be taking the tenth question, raise your hands. After we confirm your numbers, we will have you leave.'

At this announcement, the room's atmosphere increased in tension exponentially. Raiku's eyes slid helplessly to her teammate, who wasn't having any of that quitting crap. His yellow eyes remained calmly levelled at Ibiki, arms resting casually in his lap to allow his hands to form the seal. Daisukenojo was sweating and slightly pale, but staring almost as intently as Ryuu, apparently unwilling to sacrifice even a year of his time as a genin.

A hand slowly raised. The rest of the genin raised with it, showing a pale, nervous man. 'I… I quit!' he forced out, screwing his eyes shut as if expecting punishment. 'I can't take it!'

'Number fifty…' a lazy examiner's voice drawled. 'Fail. Number one hundred and thirty and one hundred and eleven fail with him.' It was the other 'genin' who had blocked the fake door, whose only indication of amusement was the glint in his otherwise bored eyes. He was looking at her too- what the hell was wrong with these people!? They _knew_ she knew Ibiki, that was the only solution.

'I'm sorry Gennai, Inaho,' the quitter said weakly, hanging his head in shame, fists clenching helplessly at his sides as two almost identically dressed genin gracefully stood.

'Me too!' another exclaimed desperately, surging to his feet as though he were afraid of losing the opportunity. As if these two failures gave them courage, yet more hands were raised, and a steady flow of people left the room almost empty compared to its previous, bustling state.

Raiku made a low keening sound, largely ignored.

And then the unthinkable happened.

Uzumaki Naruto… raised his hand

She could have cried with relief. Yes, she thought to herself. Quit, Naruto! Save me!

He slammed it onto the table, and she cringed. 'Screw you!' he growled, and she watched the Plot shift triumphantly. 'I'm not going to run away! I'll take this problem!'

Why, she wondered darkly, wishing she had her arms free so she could electrocute him to death, did he raise his hand if he wasn't going to quit? Did he enjoy teasing her?

'Even if I fail and said a Genin forever,' he said, voice gradually rising in volume as his voice became even more determined. 'I'll find a way to become the Hokage no matter what anyway!' He rose to his feet, hands planted firmly on the desk. 'I'm not scared!'

Well, she thought to herself, fuming. That made one of them.

Ibiki stared at him impassively as he sank back into his seat, that display of inspirational courage evidently tiring even while earning him admiring looks. 'I will ask one more time,' Ibiki said. 'This is the choice that will impact your life- if you want to quit, now's your chance.'

Raiku didn't bother trying to struggle this time, it was clearly hopeless.

'I'm not going to take back my words,' Naruto said, smirking at Ibiki, sort of like a glass of water would smirk at the ocean. 'That's my "way of the ninja".'

Pride and courage raced through the classroom, carried on the back of a Plot Device.

Ibiki stepped forward to face the newly inspired group of Genin, eyes scanning their faces before he finally spoke. 'Nice determination. Then, for the First Exam, everyone here…' he broke into a grin. 'Passes!'

Raiku, finally free, gave a silent wail of protest and buried her face in her arms while everyone else stiffened in shock.

'What's the meaning of that!?' Sakura demanded disbelievingly, standing. 'We pass already? What about the tenth question!?'

'It was a TRICK,' Raiku groaned, shoulders shaking with repressed sobs. Everyone probably assumed it was relief. 'It was a mindgame! I'm doomed! Equaliser-food!'

Her words were ignored by the room at large. Ibiki laughed, either at Sakura's shock or Raiku's horror. 'There was no such thing to begin with!' he said gleefully. 'Or you can call the two-choice question the tenth question!'

'What?' Sakura asked, eyes widening.

'Hey!' the blonde Sand-nin exclaimed, not rising from her seat. 'So what were those previous nine problems!? It was all a waste!'

'It was false hope, that's what it was,' Raiku muttered to herself tearfully.

'No it's not,' Ibiki said smugly. 'Those nine problems accomplished their purpose: to test the information gathering skills of the individual.'

The Sand-nin frowned in question.

'The first purpose of the test lies in the first rule, since your pass-fail decision is based on your three man teams. Because of that each Genin was placed under unprecedented amounts of pressure to not be a nuisance to their team. But these test problems cannot be solved by Genins. So most of the people here must have come to the conclusion "I have to cheat to get points".'

She caught Ryuu nodding in her peripheral vision and wished him pain. Endless pain.

'In other words, this exam assumed everyone was going to cheat. So we snuck in two Chuunins who knew the answers to be the targets of cheating.'

Naruto laughed loudly and awkwardly, putting his arms behind his head. 'It was so obvious!' he lied in an obvious way. 'It would have been weird not to notice it, right Hinata?'

In fact, she wished Ryuu almost as much pain as she was now wishing Naruto.

'But,' Ibiki shrugged carelessly. 'Those who cheated like a fool failed, of course.' He reached up, untying his forehead protector. 'And why? Information can have a greater value that life at times, and in missions and on the battlefield information is contested with the lives of people!'

His previously covered scalp was a horrific mess of scars, used to illustrate his point. The majority of the Genin recoiled in shock and horror. Raiku tilted her head. Burns, lacerations, coiled twists- torture marks.

'The information,' Ibiki went on as he put the bandanna back on to everyone's supreme relief, 'that an enemy gets after being noticed by a third person will not necessarily be accurate. So remember this- getting incorrect information can cause great damage to your teammates and village,' he warned. 'So we made you get information in the form of cheating, and kicked out those lacking in that field. That's what happened.'

The Sand-nin clearly either had Views on this sort of manipulation or was just pissed off. 'But I still can't agree to that kind of question!' she stated.

'But this kind question was the main question in the First Exam,' he pointed out coolly.

'What do you mean?' Sakura asked. Raiku shot her a vile glare, lifting her head slightly. She was dragging this on by asking questions he was already intending to answer!

'Let me explain,' he said predictably. 'The tenth question was a "take or take not" choice. Needless to say, it was a painful two-choice problem,' he held up two fingers to illustrate his point. 'Those who did not take it failed with their teams. If you chose to take it and could not answer it, your right to take the exam would have been taken away forever. It was an insincere problem.'

"Insincere"? she questioned dubiously within the relatively safe confines of her mind.

'How about this two-choice problem?' he asked mildly, beginning to pace at the front of the classroom. 'Let's assume you have become Chuunin, and your mission is to secure a secret document. The number of enemy ninja, their locations and armaments are unknown. There may be enemy traps set up. Will you accept this mission, or not? Just because the lives of your teammates and your life may be in danger, are you able to avoid dangerous missions? The answer is… No. There are missions with heavy risks that cannot be avoided. The ability to show courage to your teammates-,'

Well, she'd failed.

'- when needed and the ability to get through a bad situation- that is what we look for in a Chuunin and squad leader.'

Why was she here, again?

'Those who cannot bet their fates in a critical situation, those who give up when given the chance because there is a next year,' he said, lip curling in derision, 'and let their minds sway over an uncertain future, fools who barely carry determination like that don't deserve to be Chuunin.'

Her eyes narrowed. She wouldn't let some guilt-striking words make her forget that she had a job to do. The family came before the team, and came before being a shinobi.

'So what I am saying is that those of you who chose to remain gave the right answer to the tenth question. You can deal with the difficulties you will face. You have broken through the entrance. The First Exam of the Chuunin Selection ends now. I wish you luck.'

Naruto exploded out of his chair with a cry of joy, and Raiku fought to urge to lunge out of her own to strangle her teammate.

A window exploded. Despite her overpowering urge to absolutely destroy her teammate, Raiku looked up. With a fluid movement a large dark red piece of fabric was suspended by kunai between floor and ceiling, white writing scrawled across it.

'Everyone!' the pretty, purple haired woman who'd so abruptly arrived exclaimed, seemingly at ease despite only wearing a mesh shirt and undone jacket on her torso and shin guards and short skirt on her lower half. 'Now is no time to be happy!'

'"Second Examiner Mitarashi Anko is here"…?' Raiku read on the fabric with a dubious expression. 'I am the Second Examiner Mitarashi Anko!' the woman announced, as though it wasn't emblazoned behind her. 'Let's go to the next exam!'

'Follow me!' Anko yelled, punching the air.

Stunned silence.

Ibiki took a half-step from out behind the fabric. 'Grasp the atmosphere,' he instructed Anko, deadpan.

Anko flushed, shooting him a glare before glancing out at the shocked Genin. 'Eighty one?' she asked, shooting him another, more questioning look. 'Ibiki, you let twenty seven teams pass? The First Exam must have been too soft!'

Ibiki was unfazed. 'It looks like there are a lot of excellent students this time.'

Anko snorted. 'Well, I'm going to make more than half of the teams fail in the Second Exam!' She smirked. 'I'm getting quite excited. I'll explain the details tomorrow. We'll go somewhere else, so ask your Jounin leader about the rally point and time. That is all- dismissed!'

Instantly Naruto led the way out to meet the assorted Jounin teachers, the Genin piling haphazardly towards the exit. Raiku sighed and stood, stretching her arms above her head. 'C'mon,' Ryuu said, jerking his head towards the doors.

'Coming,' she nodded. She blinked when her foot stuck to the floor. She looked down to see sand piled up around the offending appendage, and growled. 'Sand! Again with the sand!' she muttered under her breath, crouching to brush some of it off and only mildly surprised when it didn't move.

'Come on, toaster!' Daisukenojo called impatiently from the door. She straightened and waved dismissively.

'I'll catch up!'

She looked around as her teammates vanished from view, convinced this was some sort of malicious trick. Her eyes fell on the impatient Sand-nin who had been so questioning earlier, leaning against the desk with a large, strange black contraption on her back. She was staring at her with narrowed eyes, identical ones doing the same set in the purple-painted face next to her. The Sand-nin with purple markings was wearing a curiously feline hat and loose bodysuit, and seated next to them was…

She tilted her head. 'Mystery-nin?' she mumbled under her breath, squinting to see him better. There was no question it was him, of course, but she was so desperate to be wrong that she double-checked before saying anything. She brightened with genuine pleasure, relieved that the trick was being done to catch her attention. Or that's what she sincerely hoped it was for.

She sent him a cheerful wave. 'Hey! It's good to see you again!'

The boy in the cat hat crossed his arms across his chest, narrowing his eyes even further. She rallied her enthusiasm with herculean effort. 'Are you going to tell me your name this time?' she asked curiously.

'Gaara… do you know this girl?' the girl asked, giving her a cold stare.

Raiku winced, and the cat hat boy smirked at her discomfort. She couldn't quite understand why he was keeping her here if he wasn't going to talk to her. The boy with the blank green eyes looked at her for a while. 'You survived the trip through the wet season,' his purple-y companion said, voice flippant. 'How?' It was a demand, not a real inquiry.

She shrugged. 'We used our skills to our advantage, I guess. We argue a lot, but we're actually a pretty good team,' she said modestly.

The sand tightened around her ankle, and she flinched when it seeped inside the wrappings to touch her skin to melt into glass.

The red-haired boy tilted his head, narrowing blackened eyes.

'Let's go, Kankuro, Gaara,' the girl sniffed, dismissing her with a flick of her head. Raiku felt her blood surge, unbidden, hair rising to float free of gravity.

'Gairano,' Ibiki muttered from the front of the classroom.

Of course he would know, she reprimanded herself for her surprise. He wouldn't tolerate a secret, even a Gairano one. She looked at him over her shoulder and nodded in understanding, forcing it back inside her skin and raising a hand to smooth her hair down as much as it would allow her.

She gave a tense bow. 'It was nice to see you again, Sand-nin,' she said tersely, trying in vain to get herself to relax. 'I'm sorry you didn't like my answers to your questions. I hope to be able to speak with you in a setting I won't be made fun of in.'

With a firm stamp of her free foot the sand turned to transparent sludge, allowing her to make her triumphant, if slightly gooey way outside.

The redhead named 'Gaara' had yet to speak to her.

* * *

A/N: Ah, Gaara. You terrify her so much.

Reviews:

Anonymous(envysXsin): We have an accord. And in your defence, those rice cookers are treacherous little things. I can only put him in so many embarassing situations in a period of time, but every character will be in more, I guarantee it. I update... incredibly quickly, so if I were you I'd put an alert on it so that when I put two up in one day you'll know about it. Also- is this chapter long enough for you?


	16. Head Trauma

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Oh. You wanna know something interesting? I totally could have put this up yesterday. Would have broken my record and everything. But _I think not_. I'm not that nice. Thank'ee Vanya Starwind.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

'You aren't very good at this "failing" thing, huh,' her father said conversationally, casually cleaning out his nails with a kunai as he sat on the grass in the light of the setting sun.

She shook her head frantically.

'You know you'll have to fail the next round?' he asked lightly, flicking a leaf off his leg, listening to the pleasant sound of water flowing in the river he sat next to.

She nodded furiously.

He smiled as the water reflected the setting sun and the breeze gently tousled his hair, completely the picture of serenity.

Well, what would have been a picture of serenity if Raiku hadn't been tied up and then tied to dangle by her feet from a sturdy tree branch above the river. She struggled furiously against her bonds, rubbing her skin raw through the fabric as it chafed against her clothes, resembling nothing more than a fish wriggling on a hook.

'So we understand each other?' he asked, looking up at her at last, smiling warmly. Her father and the Equaliser next to him.

Securely gagged, she nodded helplessly. He hadn't waited for her to explain why she'd failed and he hadn't waited for her to tell him she'd have another chance. The family was angry. A strong burst of wind made her sway ominously on the rope, and she screwed her eyes shut. She could picture it now: the sudden burst of power as everything in the river was treated to an impromptu frying, the warm water filling her lungs as she tried desperately to inhale and stinging her eyes as she tried to see, buffeted down the river like a leaf in the wind to land where she may, sending electric destruction both before and behind her…

The Equaliser sent the kunai flashing through the air to sever the rope holding her up as her father walked away. She gave a muffled scream and thudded onto the riverbank headfirst, sending a sharp jolt of agony from the top of her skull down her spine. The water flowed quickly only inches from her face, that pathological, programmed terror she faced when confronted with the liquid rising to choke her. A distant crash echoed in her ears, fire spreading down her back and through her limbs, surging to the surface of her skin while her ears rang and the pain threatened to steal her vision completely.

'Happy birthday,' the Equaliser added, muffled by the ink-black mask. He turned on his heel and strode back towards the compound. She wriggled her way free of the restraints on her arms, yanking down the gag and glaring after him as she shoved the burn down, with the pain and indignation to somewhere it couldn't bother her.

'Thanks,' she muttered, one dazed, dilated pupil sparking more than it should have.

* * *

'Why the hell didn't you _tell_ us it was your birthday yesterday!?' Daisukenojo hissed without any sort of discretion and a jab to her ribs as the Genin waited in front of the monstrously large forest for the Examiner.

She kept her eyes fixed firmly on the trees in front of them and didn't respond. The smallest part of their smallest root would still be bigger than her. Ancient moss coated the colossal figures, the canopy so thick and lush that they could barely make out a tree beyond the ones immediately behind the heavily reinforced fence guarding the territory. The leaves left the tops of the trees overshadowed and the gaps between branches ominously dark and impenetrable, unstirred by the breeze.

'I-it was your b-birthday yesterday, Raiku-chan?' Hinata asked timidly from behind them.

'Yes,' she answered, not shifting her gaze.

'I-it's a shame… that you had t-to spend it in that exam,' the quiet Hyuuga said softly.

Frankly Raiku was more worried about the concussion. The pain and intense headache had left her in… the first bad mood she had ever, in her entire life, been in.

And it was a bad one. The burn was sweeping through her whenever she didn't actively focus on it, and the exertion was making her head spin and her ears ring. It was enraging, the thought of having so little self-control after one measly hit on the head.

'I don't really care about my birthday,' she said stiffly, forcing her ire down, the irrationality spurred by the odd tightness in her chest.

'What the hell are you talking about?' Kiba asked, slinging an arm around her tense shoulders. 'You turned thirteen, right? You're finally a teenager and you don't give a damn?'

'No,' she said, shrugging his arm off.

Ryuu's eyes carefully scanned her face, his expression shrewd. '"Electrical malfunction",' he echoed for the second time.

She nodded again, swallowing in feigned pain. Her mother's death wasn't something that her family cared about, and therefore she didn't either. She couldn't mourn a stranger and she'd never noticed her absence. But her family hated birthdays too, since on birthdays the level of Trauma risk skyrocketed, so she'd simply never celebrated one. Her mother's death gave her an excuse, which she cashed in on now.

'What?' Daisukenojo asked, he and the other Rookie Genin giving Ryuu weird looks at the unexplained but inexplicably confirmed assumption.

Ryuu rolled his eyes, shooting him a glare. 'Electrical malfunction?' he said, jabbing him. 'Hospital, birthday?'

Daisukenojo's look remained uncomprehending. Ryuu growled under his breath.

'Her mother _died_ the day she was born, moron!' he hissed. 'Her birthday's the anniversary of her death!'

Daisukenojo scowled. 'Hey, don't call me a- oh.' He shrunk back, casting her a wary look. 'Oh.' The words "electrical malfunction" flashed into his mind. He swallowed hard. 'Oh,' he repeated.

'Well why the hell didn't you say so?' Kiba asked, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder. 'You could've said you didn't want to talk about it.'

'It's fine,' she gritted out. '_I'm_ fine.' The fierce, hot ache hit her in the chest. Ruthlessly quashed yet again, it settled to a dull twinge.

'You don't seem fine,' Daisukenojo pointed out.

She narrowed her unnatural eyes at the forest in front of her and said nothing. Getting the hint, Kiba raised his hands and backed off. Hinata dropped her gaze, flushing in guilt and embarrassment. Clearly, she thought, Raiku was in pain.

'Shorty,' Yamada interrupted from behind the Genin group as Daisukenojo opened his mouth to speak. 'Leave it,' he said warningly, eyes flicking pointedly to Raiku's hands. Daisukenojo closed his mouth, eyes skimming down her arms to see her fists clenched and shaking, sparks jumping between the fine stitching on the leather and burning.

She'd only wanted to leave the exam and do her job. She wanted to be free of this damn Plot and to live a normal life. She didn't want to be murdered by Equalisers or strung up by her father above a river and set crashing headfirst onto the rocky riverbank. For the first time she was feeling… As though she'd been unfairly treated. Her blood pounded in her ears. At last she realised: she felt… Angry.

Very, very angry. She shoved it down yet again and smiled. Cheerful… now was the time to be cheerful.

'Raiku-chan!' a familiar, sickeningly cheerful voice exclaimed. She found herself spun around and seized by the shoulders, staring in bewilderment into the tearful face of Rock Lee. 'Your bravery is so inspiring!'

'What?' she asked incredulously. She was unheard.

'Despite the pain of your mother's death-,' yes, there go the curious gazes. She closed her eyes wearily to avoid the stares of _every single person present_. '-and the subsequent sapping of joy from every birthday you had since then, you valiantly persevere-,'

'I don't mourn her,' she interrupted, immediately derailing his train of praise. He jerked back in surprise, blinking owlishly.

'Raiku-chan?'

She opened her eyes, looking up at him, eyebrow twitching in aggravation. 'I said I don't mourn her,' she repeated. 'Mourning is just selfish.'

'…Selfish?' he echoed dumbly.

Her eyes narrowed, gaze falling on the ground. 'Mourning is wishing that someone would be with _you_, that _you _would have them there for _your_ purposes,' she muttered, the leather of her gloves threatening to rip in her tightening grip. 'Mourning is _selfish_.'

Rock Lee blinked at her, hands releasing her shoulders uncertainly. 'Raiku-chan…' he repeated quietly, staring at her. She took a deep breath, calming herself.

'Yesterday was my birthday and today it's not. I don't mind- really,' she said, creasing her eyes and smiling up at him. 'It's just another day. I'm sorry I said that, but I'm really nervous about the exam. It's…' she gave a self-depreciating laugh, rubbing the back of her neck. 'Really embarrassing to react like that. Forgive me?'

She knew she should snap out of it. She knew what she was doing was because the Plot was getting its grip on her, but if, as the family had told her, she was trapped in it already, what was the point? She felt multiple gazes resting on her, felt them relax at her confirmation of what they'd already suspected.

She was a Rookie – her nervousness was expected.

On her part, she just had to fail. Once she failed, she'd be out of the Plot forever. Then this anger would go away. This sense of injustice would vanish and the images would stop haunting her. The image of Mura's face and a man sitting alone. The image of a shinobi who had no one and never would. The sight of the ground rushing up to meet her for a mistake she hadn't been able to prevent.

She shook her head, closing her eyes as Rock Lee happily accepted her apology. Ryuu and Daisukenojo suspected they knew why she was upset. They thought she was upset because she thought she was a murderer. That wasn't true either. She wanted to tell them that being a murderer didn't matter to her because every shinobi became one in the end; she wanted to tell them that it didn't bother her. But she couldn't do it. Doing it meant that she would have to acknowledge that that wasn't the problem, doing it meant having to face that something else might be wrong.

The ground shook in a familiar way. Uzumaki had arrived.

'Whoa,' she heard him breathe out. 'What is this place?'

A low, feminine chuckle interrupted any answer someone may have provided her with. 'You're going to be able to experience why this is called the "Forest of Death",' Mitarashi Anko grinned maliciously, setting her hands on her hips in front of the wire fence surrounding the forest.

Naruto snorted, wiggling in an effeminate way. '"Today you're going to experience why this is called the Forest of Death,"' he imitated flamboyantly. 'There's no point in trying to scare us like that!' he exclaimed, giving her a challenging grin. 'I'm not scared at all!'

Raiku raised her hand to her chest, tightening the glove and fisting her fingers. No point at all. She allowed the heat to warm her frightened limbs this time.

Anko tilted her head, smiling sweetly. In saccharine tones, she addressed Naruto. 'Really? You sure are energetic.'

A muscle in her eyebrow twitched. Almost before Raiku could narrow her own eyes in suspicion a kunai slid out of Anko's sleeve into her hand and was sent whizzing past Naruto's ear, thudding into the ground next to an unfazed Genin.

Anko came to a halt behind Naruto, pressing close to him. 'Boys like you die the fastest,' she murmured into his ear as blood started to slide down his face. Raiku raised her eyebrows when Anko raised her hands to cradle either side of the boy's face, expression delighted. She murmured something to him Raiku couldn't catch, deeply unsettling Naruto from the looks of it. She half-turned with a kunai at the ready as the Genin she had narrowly missed appear behind her-

The Genin held her discarded kunai in a freakishly extended tongue, somehow managing to speak with ease around it. 'Here's your knife,' they offered.

'Thank you,' Anko said, smiling pleasantly. 'But don't stand behind me like that- that is,' she added, the warning signs around her mouth and eyes appearing. 'Unless you want to die young.' She took the kunai without a hint of disgust and the tongue withdrew into the Genin's mouth, that androgynous face remaining expressionless.

'Well,' the Genin said eventually, voice implying him to be a woman even as his speech gave him away as a man. 'I get itchy when I see blood. Also… my precious hair was cut, so I got a bit excited.'

The Plot was the same as Yakushi's; Raiku half-turned to see the man better. 'Naruto-kun,' Hinata said in quiet concern, hands clasped to her chest. It was understandable. Naruto was in a very, very tense situation and was famous for letting his mouth dominate where his head was supposed to reign.

Luckily, the almost androgynous man turned and casually threw an apology over his shoulder, walking away and narrowly missing bumping into Sakura.

Raiku only half-listened to the explanation of the exam.

Despite her best efforts, something ugly swelled under her skin.

* * *

'Alright,' Ryuu said quietly as the three of them crouched in a triangle on a high branch, deep into the darkness of the forest. Raiku's bare hand provided very dim illumination, fist clenched to keep the power at a discreet minimum. With a stick, he drew the circle of the forest in the quietly crackling light. 'Somewhere in this forest there are twenty six other teams. Each has a scroll. One more scroll has been hidden somewhere in here, a heaven scroll. That kind is the sort we need.'

He paused, fingers halting over his rough map. 'So the question,' he said, eyes flicking up to look at her and Daisukenojo. 'Is what approach we want to take. Finding the hidden scroll will be incredibly hard, but fighting the other teams has a higher risk of death.'

'I want to find the hidden scroll,' she said quietly, because she wanted the opposite.

Daisukenojo snorted. 'Are you kidding me? Chicken like always. We're tougher than these other teams. I vote we fight for the other scroll.' He glanced up at Ryuu. 'Your vote decides.'

Ryuu was looking Raiku, who was looking at the map. 'Why?' he asked.

Daisukenojo frowned. 'Because we can beat them,' he said slowly, as though talking to a particularly stupid child.

Ryuu shook his head. 'Not you. You explained already.' He jerked his head at Raiku. 'Your turn to explain.'

Raiku tilted her head slightly. 'I think,' she said slowly, hesitantly. 'That there is… something wrong with me.' She faltered, reluctant to say much more. 'I think,' she continued, forcing the words out. 'That if I fight… I won't be able to stop.'

The silence was filled by the gentle crackling of her hand. 'God, toaster, why didn't you say anything?' Daisukenojo frowned, running a hand through the red stubble that his haircut had left him with. 'You going psycho is something you shoulda mentioned.'

'I thought I could fix it before the exam,' she muttered. 'I didn't want to _have_ to mention it.'

Ryuu didn't comment. 'If that's the case, think of what we have to do to find the hidden scroll,' he decided, moving the stick to gesture at the area. 'This Examiner is sly. She'd pick something that would make us frustrated for not guessing.'

'Each scroll has a very small chakra signature,' Daisukenojo noted, surprising them both. 'I can sense the one we've got right now. It's really, really faint,' he added at their questioning looks. 'You can only get a read on it when you're pretty close.'

'How close?' Ryuu murmured. Daisukenojo considered.

'I could sense the one she had in her hand,' he said eventually, and Raiku was once again surprised by the instantaneous transformation into the professional. 'So a little over ten metres is the furthest I can be to sense it.'

Ryuu frowned. 'We can't afford to scan the area that way. There's a third axis to worry about when in a forest, and it may be buried.'

'I can lap the entire place easily,' Raiku said quietly. 'But I can't carry anyone. Not without…' she trailed off, averting her eyes.

'You can't keep it to a minimum?' Ryuu pressed. She shook her head.

'That's the problem right now. The risk is too high even normally to try it.'

'I guessed as much. Daisukenojo, is there any way to help Raiku be able to pick it up on her own?'

Daisukenojo snorted. 'You want me to create a technique that'll pick up signatures for her, in a forest with twenty six hostile teams, all carrying scrolls?'

'Let me worry about the teams,' he said grimly. 'Can you do it?'

Daisukenojo shifted his weight back onto his heels, considering. 'I might,' he said eventually. 'But we can't rely on it. A technique usually takes months to make, not less than five days.'

Ryuu nodded. 'In that case, the obvious solution is the alternative,' he said quietly. 'We take a scroll from another team.'

She nodded slowly. 'Then I suppose…' she said after a while. 'We'd better try and get an idea of where they all are anyway.'

Ryuu looked at her carefully, drumming his fingers on the stick. 'Can you do it without losing control?'

'I don't have control,' she snorted. 'Ever.' She tapped her mask meaningfully.

'That explains a lot.' Daisukenojo rubbed his head again, dark eyes deep in thought. 'I can sense six teams within five kilometres. I can't tell which scrolls they have… obviously. But two are Rookie teams, and one of the other's that lovely Sound team Raiku had the decency to get good and pissed off at us.'

'Maybe if I kill them I'll feel better?' she offered mildly.

'We'll think about it,' both responded.

'That means no,' she said sullenly, folding her arms across her chest.

'It means we'll think about it,' Ryuu said sternly, flicking her in the nose reprovingly. He straightened with a soft exhalation, stretching his arms over his head. Glumly, she noticed he'd had another growth spurt, now standing head and shoulders above her and lean with it, possessing the perfect musculature of a stealth shinobi. Daisukenojo was almost at her height and heavily built for his age, wearing the physical benefit of Yamada's training.

They were growing and growing older, and she was the same, she noticed in surprise. She was still exactly one hundred and sixty centimetres tall, and thin as a rail. She was much stronger but the vague outline of herself she saw in mirrors still resembled a long-limbed black spider. Skinny and curling in the light to try and disappear.

She viciously shoved the thought away. She was trapped in an Angst line. It was the only explanation and she _would not stand for it_. She smiled to her team, giving them a thumbs-up. 'We can do this!'

'She's happy suddenly,' Daisukenojo sighed in exasperation, cuffing her over the back of her head. He straightened, yanking her up to stand as well. 'I suppose we should be glad?'

Ryuu's eyes gave her a cursory once-over. 'It's her defence mechanism. Ignore it.'

She sagged. 'Aw.'

'Quiet,' he ordered. He ran a hand through his hair and adjusted his forehead protector. 'Let's go rob someone.'

He couldn't repress the smirk that spread across his face as behind him, his teammates grinned.

* * *

A/N: And slowly, but surely, Raiku starts to go insane.

No Orochimaru to blame, either.

Reviews:

Anonymous(envysXsin): I do intend to continue past there, and I'll try to maintain a high average wordcount. If you have any suggestions in regards to pairing, I'd appreciate it, given that Raiku's sort of ... tricky.


	17. Exotic Insects and Hunting

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: In this chapter Raiku is a ghost, a wimp, a shadow and after seventeen chapters she is at last, a real ninja.

This chapter is very rough, but after writing it I honestly never want to look at it again. Ino and I... don't get along.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

It was less than thirty minutes into the exams that the explosions began. Raiku was surprised, in truth.

She didn't think it would take that long.

Darting through the trees at breakneck speeds, Ryuu gave a sharp whistle from somewhere to their far left. Daisukenojo jumped to intercept from the ground, while she remained in the canopy, planting her feet firmly on the branch she had been about to step off.

She tilted her head curiously as another Raiku followed, darting through the trees below her. So it was beginning? She was glad, in truth. They'd set up the system to make it easy for anyone to interfere, more specifically to impersonate her.

She was the hardest to imitate, for obvious reasons.

However, if this team member was cocky enough to impersonate her they would have left a teammate behind to make sure she didn't interfere. Raiku smiled to herself. They wouldn't send their scroll bearer directly into the hands of the enemy and they wouldn't send them after her. She just had to destroy the one after her badly enough that the third decided to intervene. Ryuu and Daisukenojo would keep the fake with them long enough to trick her into thinking that she'd succeeded, at which point they would find Raiku and trade the imposter for the real one. That left only the scroll bearer to deal with when they finally decided to show themselves.

That being said she sat firmly down into a cross-legged position on the massive, moss covered tree branch and started whistling to herself, fishing from her pocket and making adjustments to a long, razor sharp wire.

* * *

'Ryuu-kun, what's going on?' Raiku asked, rubbing the back of her head tiredly and stifling a yawn, landing lightly in the sun dappled clearing he had called them to. 'I thought we were going to find another team.'

Ryuu didn't look at her, readjusting his sandal as he crouched in the middle of the clearing, hair ruffled by the breeze. 'We are,' he said shortly.

'I don't see one,' Daisukenojo drawled, sticking his hands in his pockets, squinting as the sun hit his eyes. It was hard to adjust after the almost pitch-black of the forest, but he didn't have to worry in his current setting.

'Team Gai is nearby,' Ryuu said, straightening. 'You said they have the same scroll as us.'

'Well yeah,' the redhead shrugged. 'But I don't see any reason to team up with them.'

'We're not going to,' Ryuu explained. 'We're going to follow them and then take the scroll they're almost guaranteed to find before we do.'

'You're a sneaky bastard and it works. Raiku-chan, you ready?' Daisukenojo asked, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. She creased her eyes, nodding.

'No problem!'

'Oh but wait!' Daisukenojo said sarcastically. 'I forgot that there _is_ a problem! How does this sound? Team Gai _hates_ us. Or hates you, really,' he said to Raiku.

'Me?' she asked, pointing to herself in that strangely habitual way.

'No, I meant the other Raiku. Of course you!' he snapped.

She set her hands on her hips. 'But Rock Lee likes me!'

'Yeah, but isn't it a shame about Hyuuga? You know, the guy who _leads the team_?!'

She glared at him. 'It's not that bad!'

Ryuu paused and Daisukenojo smirked. Raiku stepped back, instantly on edge. 'Let's go,' Ryuu said firmly, turning on his heel. 'We need to approach slowly, or they'll put their guards up.'

'Didn't… Didn't you have a problem with this plan?' Raiku asked Daisukenojo, raising an eyebrow.

He shrugged. 'He's the boss.'

She didn't notice how keenly he watched her when she responded. 'Sure,' she sighed.

'It's going to be nightfall soon, so they may try to get the drop on us,' Ryuu added as they walked. 'Teams Kakashi and… Raiku's friends are also nearby.'

'I can't sense anything,' Daisukenojo frowned. His brow creased, deep in concentration. 'Not unless I strain. And I know damn well you aren't better at that than me.'

'A birdie told me,' Ryuu said, ducking under a low, lichen covered branch. They settled into silence for a while as they walked, making slow progress.

'Don't even think about trying to get me to try and sense the scrolls from here, bastard,' Daisukenojo warned when the idea occurred to him, jumping nimbly over a protruding tree root easily twice his size.

'And you mentioned… My friend?' Raiku ventured cautiously.

Ryuu tilted his head slightly, eyes fixed on some unseen point in the distance. 'Sound-nin that we beat the crap out of.'

'Ah.' She nodded, falling silent.

'Reckon she'll be alright? The girl in Team Kakashi,' Daisukenojo asked after a while, deep in thought. 'She didn't seem like she particularly wanted to be here.'

'She'll be fine,' Ryuu answered. He frowned suddenly. 'Team Gai's moving out. My guess is to scout for other teams.'

Raiku smiled faintly.

'Good.'

* * *

'Now,' Raiku sighed theatrically, sitting back on the branch and using her hands to support her. One leg bent and the other ankle resting on her bent knee, she jigged her raised foot carelessly. 'You're not very good at this stealth thing, are you?'

She was beginning to see why her father liked being in charge of the family.

The bound figure was wriggling like a worm on a hook, ankles tied together and wrists tied behind their back. Wire bound their arms completely to them, and the black cloth gag forced between their teeth couldn't hide the horrible burns on their face.

They glared at her.

'Right now,' she said, lifting a hand to look at her bared fingernails, studiously ignoring the burns in the shapes of handprints on the boy's body. 'Your teammate is travelling with my team. You thought you'd replace me because it's easy to impersonate a wimp.' She inclined her head in acknowledgement. 'That's true. Very soon I'm going to, while leaving you tied up upside down, sever the cord holding you to that tree branch. You're going to fall to your death or just severe injury, I'm not quite sure. But that _should_ teach you not to try and rip the clothes off underage girls, leaving me with the assurance that in either case, you won't do it again.'

The boy had paled and tried to shake his head when he heard of her plans, then nodded in agreement.

She blinked. 'You think you've already learnt?'

He nodded again, desperately. His eyes were wide and imploring.

She sighed again. 'I believe you.'

He sagged with relief when she stood, stretching her long, thin arms over her head.

'But!' she added brightly, putting her hands on her hips. She creased her eyes at him in a smile. 'That doesn't change the fact that you ripped my sleeves!'

She stepped closer to him, bringing his upside down face to eye level. 'I really needed those.'

The boy closed his eyes.

* * *

Dawn found Raiku clinging to the underside of a tree branch, electric blue eyes glowing brightly in the dark like some strange, exotic insect. Which was, she reflected, eyes firmly fixed on the figures of Team Asuma, a great improvement from a spider. The three Rookie Genin were slumped in a relatively clear patch of ground, the noisy blonde slumped against a tree branch.

'How are we going to get scrolls if we keep running away, Shikamaru?' the blonde asked in tones perilously close to a whine. Raiku raised an eyebrow and leaped silently for another branch, chakra-laden fingertips and toes keeping her easily suspended. Courtesy of Daisukenojo, this skill required no chakra of her own to use.

'Avoiding troublesome shinobi is our best option for the first few days. After that the weaker teams will be worn down and easy pickings,' the brunette sighed, expression deadpan, as per usual. Raiku noted his hair was almost as spiky as hers, grinning slightly and adding an upwards tilt to the disembodied, glowing blue eyes.

'Hey… Shikamaru,' the fat one asked slowly, reaching for a bag of potato chips he appeared to have perpetually attached to him. 'Would Hyuuga be considered troublesome?'

'Which Hyuuga?' Shikamaru yawned.

'Neji,' the fat one answered, casually munching on a chip.

'Hide!' the blonde hissed, lunging to her feet and leaping over the bushes closest to Raiku to crouch. Shikamaru instantly slid down next to her, narrowly avoiding the fat one's leg colliding with his head as he too followed them, crouching behind the bush, backs to the clearing they had previously occupied.

This brought the fat one about a metre from Raiku's floating, blowing blue gaze. For a moment his eyes squinted blindly into the dark, senses apparently entirely occupied with focusing on where he feared Hyuuga might be approaching. Raiku tilted her darkness-shrouded head slightly, grinning. This was perfect! She was a coward and thus, made for stealth! How had she never thought of this before!?

The flush of heat brought on by her encounter the day before began to ebb, appeased at the idea of at the very least frightening them. She didn't force it away just yet- it gave her reflexes an unexpected boost and she was actually sort of glad it was there.

While she burned, she wasn't afraid, which was a nice change. A great deal of her cowardice was exaggerated, but it wasn't appropriate in this setting.

Well, exaggerated wasn't the right word.

Alright, it was all real, she admitted to herself grudgingly. But right now she was enjoying her stealth.

She widened her eyes, tilting her head with deliberately owlish movement as Neji stepped into the clearing behind the three.

The fat one's gaze finally locked on hers, attracted by the movement. All the colour vanished from his face, she noted with glee. He pointed at what to him looked like a pair of floating ghostly eyes, opening and closing his mouth like a fish.

Was this why her teammates liked picking on her? Because she could hardly blame them.

Neji came to a stop, turning to look in the direction of the three (four) hiding Genin. 'Stop hiding and come out,' he instructed.

'…Ghost…' the fat one managed to whimper, finger shaking. He saw the eyes narrow. He was ignored.

'But we hid as fast as we could!' the blonde whispered.

'What a troublesome one found us,' Shikamaru muttered to them, yet again ignoring the utter terror on the fat one's face.

'Plan Number One – hide and run failed!' the blonde said in a whisper to him, turning her head away from their petrified, pudgy teammate. 'Now we have to execute Plan Number Two!'

She could insert capitals into sentences too, Raiku smiled.

'It'll work for sure,' she said firmly.

Shikamaru sighed, grimacing. 'I don't mind.'

The fat one's resolve snapped and he jumped to his feet, barrelling past his teammates so quickly t ground shook under his feet. 'Ghost!' he cried.

'Chouji!' the blonde exclaimed, leaping to her feet alongside Shikamaru to follow. 'Chouji, what are y- Hyuuga Neji!' she remembered, laughing nervously, caught in an act of frustration and trying to look innocent. She turned slowly towards him, and her sudden pose put Raiku in mind of a fangirl. The wire attached to her gloved fingers tugged gently, and she gave a brief, savage yank in return.

It didn't move again.

Neji turned, giving them a thoroughly unimpressed look.

The blonde valiantly continued on as Shikamaru stood over their prone teammate, currently curled into a foetal position. 'How lucky to meet last year's Number One Rookie Genin, Neji-sama, here!'

Neji tilted his head slightly. 'Oh. It's just you there.'

The blonde suddenly reached up to adjust her ponytail, body language coy. Raiku stared, inching closer. No… That _couldn't_ be the plan…

The hair band came out, letting blonde hair spill attractively over the girl's shoulder as she winked flirtatiously. Raiku almost choked in shock. 'I've always wanted to see you, once,' she cooed.

Neji's expression didn't change as he turned his back, taking a few steps away. 'Begone.'

The blonde looked scandalised, face flushing with anger. Raiku's grin resurfaced. _Awesome_.

The blonde began to rage at Neji's retreating back and her teammates , expression livid. She punched the air towards him, resulting in his immediate stillness.

'You're pointing your fists at me… Does that mean you want to fight?' he asked coolly. The blonde stumbled back, rage vanishing.

'No! Not at all!' she exclaimed, raising her hands in a gesture of placation.

Neji exhaled sharply in annoyance, turning his head slightly to look over his shoulder. 'Then begone. Even if I take a scroll from cowards like you, I'll just become the laughing stock of the village.'

Without even waiting for him to finish, the three ran back to the bush. Coincidentally towards the by now long-forgotten 'ghost', but she was of course gone by then.

Neji made a derisive sound under his breath. 'They're like cockroaches.'

'Alright!' the blonde said, laughing in a brittle, high pitched tone that hurt Raiku's ears as she crouched above them. 'Let's go find some weak people!'

'There's no one weaker than us,' Shikamaru grumbled.

'Don't be stupid, Shikamaru!' the blonde said, making a fist. 'Team Yamada and Team Kakashi!'

Raiku was quietly offended, lightly balanced on a branch somewhere above their heads. She sank back onto fingertips and toes when Neji paused again, quietly despising his bloodline limit. 'When I said "stop hiding",' Neji said, raising his voice slightly. Team Asuma beat an even hastier retreat, quickly vanishing from sight. 'I meant you too… Gairano.' He turned his head to look at her directly, eyes narrowed.

The pale morning light failed to hide her black clad form, and she simply waved at him cheerfully. 'Hello Neji-san! I won't get in your way!' she smiled.

His sharp eyes caught the glint of the steadily improving light on a wire attached to her hand. 'A trap?' he muttered to himself.

'No!' she assured him hastily, waving her hands reassuringly. The wire jerked. 'No trap! Well,' she amended. 'It _was_ a trap. But it's not one any more, since someone's already in it, so you don't need to worry!'

'Your team isn't here. What game are you playing?' he demanded, but she smiled when she noticed he wasn't yet in a defensive stance.

'I'm going to meet them now,' she nodded, giving him a casual salute and vanishing. Even Neji's eyes failed to trace her steps, but couldn't miss the blue that singed the branches she trod on. He glared at her back as she sped after Team Asuma, relatively confident that it would take her to her teammates.

* * *

Chouji sat on a branch and munched happily once Shikamaru had determined they'd run far enough, and searched long enough. Above him, unseen and mirroring him in pose and action, Raiku sat with her mask pooled around her neck and munched happily on a piece of beef jerky.

Yamanaka groaned, putting a hand on either side of her head in frustration. 'We can't find any weak-looking people at all!'

Raiku smiled to herself giddily, wriggling on the spot in barely contained glee.

Shikamaru sighed heavily, turning to face her with his arms folded across his chest. 'Actually, only Naruto's team and Team Yamada are probably weaker than us.'

For some reason this instantly inspired Yamanaka's ire, despite Shikamaru only repeating what she'd said earlier. 'Idiot!' she snarled. 'Do you know what you're saying!?'

'What?' he asked, expression flat.

'Naruto and Sakura may be weak, but they're with the super genius Sasuke-kun!' she snapped.

He 'hmph'ed. 'I don't know about that. Geniuses can be quite fragile in real combat.'

She growled under her breath, a vein throbbing alarmingly in her forehead. Shikamaru sighed again. 'Fine, fine. I'm sorry that I upset you.'

'There's no way Sasuke-kun can be defeated!' Yamanaka dismissed, flipping her hair over her shoulder dismissively. She snorted abruptly. 'Though Sakura can be!'

Chouji, previously happily silenced by the fruit he'd foraged, paused mid-chew and squinted into the distance. Raiku, teeth-deep in a piece of particularly uncooperative jerky, looked down at him curiously. She had a much better view from where she sat, but she was surprised he hadn't noticed until now.

'Hey!' he called down to Yamanaka and Shikamaru. 'Sasuke's on the ground! And Sakura's fighting,' he added as an afterthought.

'What did you say?' Yamanaka demanded, swiftly jumping up to stand on the branch next to him. She shaded her eyes with her hand and squinted. Shikamaru jumped and crouched on Chouji's other side. Yamanaka gasped, catching sight of the scene.

Raiku supposed it was quite traumatic. Yamanaka wanted Sasuke as a Love Interest and he _was_ pretty badly beaten and unconscious. And while her and Sakura were rivals, they appeared to be at least an idiosyncratic type of friend. She sighed, scratching her head. She didn't want to fight Team Asuma on her own, but she hadn't found Daisukenojo and Ryuu yet. Maybe the imposter had killed them?

She muffled a snort, taking another struggling bite of jerky. _It would take more than a knife to kill that guy_, she mused in amusement, trying to picture anyone catching Ryuu off guard, ever. And as he refused to be beaten by Ryuu, Daisukenojo would hardly fall prey to the traps that Ryuu would avoid.

Team Asuma moved forward and she moved with them, high and unseen.

* * *

Midday found her on a branch above Team Asuma still, watching the utter defeat of Rock Lee. 'But our moves are the speed of sound, and exceed yours,' the porcupine-nin stated, standing over Rock Lee as he sunk to his knees, panting.

The Plot tried to shove Raiku forward and off her branch, complete with pun about the speed of light. She clung to the wood obstinately. Granted, she didn't want Rock Lee to be hurt. But Rock Lee still had a Plot about him, and wouldn't be killed now. Fire ripped through her veins, tearing a pained gasp from her. Unbidden her hand rose to the level of her eyes, sparking dangerously as it turned into a fist. With the other she slammed it into the branch, ignoring the pain. She would _never_ allow herself to fall victim to her own temper, she told herself firmly, eyes narrowed. _Never_.

'I will teach you,' the porcupine-nin continued gloating. 'That there is a wall that you can't get past with just hard work.'

Lee dodged an attack and suffered the blowback. Raiku growled under her breath. Clearly he was from _Sound_. Clearly the attack was _vibrations_. _The attack could not be any more obvious_. The porcupine-nin went on to explain.

'Your outdated moves won't work on us,' the smirking _boy who trodden on her foot, the asshole_ taunted. 'It was effective for a while,' he smirked. 'Until I showed you my technique.'

_What did you do- tread on him?_ Raiku's inner voice bitched. It occurred to her this was a lot of enmity to stem _just_ from a slightly squished foot.

'So it's not going to go as smoothly as you thought,' the bastard said, pulling his fists out of the ground. 'I can control supersonic waves and air pressure. And I'm capable of destroying even a rock. I can send air into the ground and make it a cushion, also. It's different from your dumb moves.' He unfolded his hands to show Rock Lee and Sakura, and obviously what they saw was pretty upsetting.

Raiku was just a little annoyed that her gaze wasn't physically breaking the man in half. Her fist tightened around her wires and all that was attached, every second of their use a proud testament to Uncle Morino. She paused, as even her feeble chakra senses picked something up. There was a shift in the air and a change in the wind direction. Wind was not, as many had been led to believe through popular fiction, inclined to change direction on its own. She couldn't sense them, but that was a message clear as day sent by Ryuu that Daisukenojo had picked her up. She ignored the sounds of combat behind her in favour of stifling the surges of power and dampening her chakra signature, small as it was. She'd come to rely on her power and its ability to cloak her chakra, but in a dangerous situation like this it was foolish to not take active precautions. She adjusted the senbon that was holding her ripped sleeve in place, detaching it from her glove and letting it slide down her forearm, dragged by its own weight.

Raiku turned back to the scene in front of her to catch the porcupine-nin's upraised arm and Lee's prone form.

'I won't let you!' Sakura snarled, producing kunai out of nowhere.

Raiku blinked. That was… new. Spontaneous weapons generation?

She realised that the night deprived of sleep wasn't doing her any favours, and resolved to never do it again. The porcupine-nin raised his protected arm, easily deflecting the sharp projectiles.

That was precisely why Raiku preferred to use wires in everything she did. Even if it was blocked, BAM!

Live electric current.

'C'mon,' Chouji urged below, peering through the bushes along with his stunned teammates. 'Let's run away! They're dangerous!'

'Looks like Sasuke and Naruto are out of it,' Shikamaru mused thoughtfully, dark, serious eyes analysing the scene. 'But even Lee is getting beaten, and now it's just Sakura.' He turned to Yamanaka. 'What are you going to do, Ino?'

'What, you ask?' she responded distantly.

'Sakura's in danger. Is that okay with you?' Shikamaru pressed. 'You two were best friends, right?'

Raiku grinned, temporarily distracted by her approaching team and enemy. She'd been right! Ryuu was having a positive influence on her after all!

'Hey, Ino,' Shikamaru repeated when she didn't answer. 'What are we going to do?'

'I know we have to help, but we can't do anything! We can't just jump in there!' she snapped. Raiku, their ever-present shadow, rolled her eyes, using hand puppets to imitate their discourse in silent mockery. Right up until the girl Raiku had so lovingly electrocuted stepped in. She felt a strange surge of resentment, and wondered at her own suddenly volatile feelings.

'Your hair is glossier than mine,' the girl said, grasping Sakura's hair and hoisting her slightly off the ground. 'If you have time to care for your hair, train more!'

Alright.

So there were some things that she was in the right about.

But that didn't mean she liked her, or anything.

'Trying to be sexy?' she asked mockingly, giving Sakura's hair a particularly savage yank. She raised her voice. 'Zaku! Kill the Sasuke guy in front of this pig.'

The foot-squisher laughed. 'That sounds good.'

Sakura tried to move and found her hair almost ripped out of her head, berated by the Sound-nin holding onto her. 'Don't move!'

Something occurred to Raiku.

Maybe… she wondered in the beginnings of concern. The Plot…

Involved their deaths?

And so technically… helping them… wouldn't be a problem?

She squinted, desperately trying to rationalise the situation to her advantage.

'Then let's do this,' Zaku-foot-squisher snorted, walking casually in the direction of Sakura's fallen teammates.

'Sasuke and Naruto are in trouble!' Shikamaru hissed, starting forward in his own worry.

And then Sakura did something that Raiku found admirable enough to break the rules for. She managed, through her pain and the unwillingness of her joints, to bring her hand up and slice through her own hair, freeing herself.

Ino's jaw dropped.

Raiku tucked her hands into her armpits to avoid clapping. Sakura's forehead protector dropped to the ground with a clang.

'Kin, kill her!' Zaku shouted. Sakura's hand began to move in a series of seals, just as Kin slammed into her side. An explosion of smoke heralded the use of a replacement technique, leaving only a log.

Raiku idly wished for popcorn, concealed in the leaves about Team Asuma. Sakura darted towards Zaku from the right, unleashing kunai. As he raised his hands to use his own technique she used her own again, vanishing just in time as the air sent her kunai whizzing back towards her.

The next time she dropped in from above, hands already moving in a seal. 'I'm telling you,' Zaku yelled up to her, 'it's not going to work more than two or three times!'

Kunai pelted through the air towards her, and he instantly looked around for the next place of her attack. 'Now where'd she go?'

He paused as blood dropped onto his face.

Sakura, still approaching from above, readied her kunai and landed on him heavily. The kunai slammed into his arm as he tried to defend himself, her teeth embedding themselves readily in the other.

Raiku winced.

She just _knew_ she'd have to interfere at this rate…

'Let go, damnit!' Zaku growled, struggling with Sakura furiously.

Porcupine made a move, and Ino- finally- made hers too.

Sakura looked up when the blow didn't come, eyes widening at the sight.

'Ino…' she whispered.

'I'm not going to let you take all the good parts in front of Sasuke-kun!' Ino said, as her and her team stood between Sakura and certain death.

Raiku tilted her head quizzically. 'He's… he's unconscious,' she said faintly, incredulously. 'What?'

'What are you thinking!?' Chouji demanded of Shikamaru, currently holding part of the fat boy's scarf out as a barrier. 'These guys are way too dangerous!'

'It's troublesome, but we have to do this,' Shikamaru informed him. 'Since Ino revealed herself, we men can't just run away!'

Good old fashioned emasculation? Raiku wondered.

Ino giggled to herself. 'Sorry to get you two involved, but we're a three man team. We have to do everything together.'

Shikamaru was smirking. 'Oh well. Whatever happens, happens.'

'No!' Chouji wailed. 'I don't want to die yet!' he struggled to try and get away. 'Let go of my muffler!'

'Shut up! Stop moving!' Shikamaru growled.

Zaku gave a brief chuckle. 'Run if you want. Fatty.'

Chouji abruptly stopped moving.

'Hey,' he said in a tone far removed from his usual state of comic relief. 'What did that person say? I couldn't hear him too well.'

'I said,' Zaku repeated, raising his voice. 'You can go jack off in the woods if you want… you fat ass!'

Chouji remained still for one further moment, then spun around with an expression of utter rage. 'I'm not fat! I'm big boned!'

He struck an offensive stance, chakra rippling up around him. 'Hooray for big-boned people!'

Raiku looked at her thin limbs sadly.

'Okay! You two understand that this is a fight between Konoha and Sound, right!?' Chouji demanded, pointing at his teammates.

'Geez,' Shikamaru muttered. 'This is going to be troublesome.'

'That's our line,' Zaku corrected.

Kin took a step.

Raiku hummed to herself so quietly as to be inaudible to anyone else, fingers quietly moving over her wires.

Raiku wasn't strong.

But she was very, very fast.

In an environment like this Raiku would always have the advantage, her speed and natural terror of being spotted and retaliated against making her incredibly stealthy. Who knew being a wimp could come in handy? she asked herself. Quietly praying she wouldn't be seen, naturally, but whatever worked. The wires wrapped around her fingers pulled sharply, leaving her running the risk of having her gloves cut through. These wires were more than strong enough to cut her actual fingers off, so she released all but her original trap. She was willing to help, after all, but only as long as it didn't endanger her.

Chouji's bulk expanded almost instantaneously, and his head and limbs vanished inside his clothes like some sort of turtle. He launched into the air and began to spin. 'Meat Tank!'

He hit the ground rolling, hurtling towards Zaku. 'What's this?' Zaku laughed. 'It's just a fat ass rolling!'

As suddenly comical as the situation was, Raiku felt obligated to look away as the wind became biting. Ryuu was giving the second warning. They were within a kilometre. She silently admired Daisukenojo's truly formidable knack with chakra. She could barely sense someone a hundred metres away.

She looked back to see porcupine-nin paralysed, possessed by a shadow stretching from Shikamaru's feet. The giant green ball was up in the air… she frowned. For… some reason. But she did think there was something naturally impressive about someone who could use their own shadow.

She quietly cheered Shikamaru on.

Who cared about Sasuke? He looked like a girl.

The green, rapidly spinning ball that was Chouji slammed into Zaku, sending him flying. Raiku sat back and enjoyed the show, no longer bothering to play with her wires.

'Dosu!' Kin demanded as the porcupine struck a dancer's pose. 'What are you doing!?' Her eyes fell on Shikamaru striking the same pose, widening in realisation. Shikamaru grinned mockingly.

'Ino, now it's up to you women,' Shikamaru said, further mocking the entrapped porcupine-nin by making cat ears with his hands.

'Okay Shikamaru,' Ino answered. 'Take care of my body.'

Now, Raiku was not unaware of what went on in some teams. But she didn't honestly see that one coming.

'Mind transfer technique!'

Oh. That explained it.

Ino's body fell against Shikamaru, instantly supported by her teammate. Dosu mimed the same action.

'Kin!' Zaku yelled, barely evading Chouji's attacks.

'What's wrong!?' Dosu demanded, still frozen in place.

Kin, to the surprise of no one but the other Sound-nin, raised a kunai to her own throat. 'This is it!' she said. 'If you move, this Kin girl is dead! If you don't want to retire here, leave your scroll and get out of here! Once you two back off far enough that I can't sense your chakra, I'll let this girl go!'

This provoked no response.

Kin growled. 'Chouji!'

The ball of Chouji went flying back down towards them at the same time Zaku raised his hand, intercepting the wind but still letting Kin's body slam into a tree with a hoarse cry.

'You took us too lightly.'

'Our purpose is not to get a scroll or to get through this exam. It's Sasuke-kun.'

The Plot thickened. Raiku shifted uneasily, trying not to let it see her. She kicked it off the branch, shuddering.

Dosu was making it quite clear that Kin was expendable, finally freed from Shikamaru's Shadow Imitation.

'How disgusting,' Neji's voice interrupted the tension filled scene. Raiku looked up to see him and Tenten standing on a high tree branch. 'A mere minor Sound-nin… Acting like victors for beating those second class ninja?'

Raiku clutched her heart with one hand and the branch with the other. The suspense was killing her here.

'Lee!' Tenten said worriedly, eyes falling on her battered teammate.

'Looks like he screwed up,' Neji muttered.

'You guys just keep coming out like roaches!' Dosu called, and Raiku couldn't help but agree.

'That bobbed hair kid is on our team,' Neji informed him. Chakra flared to life with his Byakugan, making the veins on his temples swell. 'Looks like you went overboard with him!'

Raiku gave a low whistle as the fighters in the clearing visibly freaked out at the sight of the activated Byakugan. Neji stood, shoulders squared and one hand forming the seal to channel his chakra. 'If you're going to continue to fight, we will fight with everything we have.'

Dosu made a sound of contempt. 'If you don't like what we're doing, stop showing off and come down here!'

'No,' Neji denied. 'It seems like there's no need for me to do that.'

It was at this point Raiku settled back against the tree trunk, secure in the knowledge that this Drama-fest would continue on happily without her.

The wind toyed with her hair, carrying the smell of blood. Third sign. Nearing half a kilometre away, Ryuu would bite his own thumb, or something similar, and send the scent to her directly. First sign- wind change. Second sign- hard wind. Third sign- blood wind. Final sign- no wind.

They were travelling slowly. She guessed it was to stop the shinobi trailing them from losing them completely.

'Jeez, guys,' she muttered, rubbing the back of her head awkwardly. 'I could've been seriously hurt in the time you've spent toying with this guy!'

'Sasuke-kun! You woke up!'

Raiku retched at the sudden, violent influx of Plot-corrupted chakra, hunching and holding her hand over her mouth. She'd never felt anything… Another wave hit her and she bit down on her lower lip to keep her mouth shut. In terms of practicality, a vomit-covered mask was one of the worst things she could provide herself with. She curled into a ball, allowing the electricity to come back to her skin and provide her with a gentle glow. The foreign impact of the chakra lessened as the soothing sensation of something far more natural to her surfaced.

She tried to force out a laugh.

Soothing… that was new. The heat vanished, evidently as cowardly at heart as she was. She was out of her league, here.

* * *

A/N: God that was long. And rough. So very... very rough. Raiku's cowardice is mixed with stealth for once! Yaaaaay. She's capable. Just... a wimp.

Reviews:

Vampy: Ahahaha! I know, right? You can provide the offspring. I think I'm allergic.

anonymous yay: Alright... this is going to take a few lines to respond to, since I really appreciate the effort you put into your review and I want to address what you've brought up. Bear with me?

I've tried very hard to keep Raiku free of sue-ness, and you have no idea how relieved I am to hear you say that you think I've succeeded. I advertised her as well balanced, and recently realised she'd never been angry and thus I've introduced her to the foreign sensation and ask you to bear with me as she struggles with it. I'm trying to show the advantages and disadvantages of her being an electrokinetic, and how it impacts her life in a semi-realistic way. I got quite tired of OCs who had very little in the way of trouble with their abilities and so I've strived to show a different aspect of that kind of life.

Her struggle between being a Gairano and a shinobi is one I'm actually enjoying writing and fully intend to perpetuate. I'll try not to disappoint you.

Aha! You brilliant creature, you've come across the point I've tried to make. You have ... no idea how much that pleases me. The idea that a Plot can only be a bad thing is one that the Gairano family sticks to without any apparent premise, and is one of the main obstacles Raiku will later have to face. The ability of a Gairano to interfere with any Plot they like is also essential as well as their reasons for being so desperate to maintain a firm grasp over the Naruto Plot. As such, I'm afraid I can't answer these questions just yet, and apologise profusely.

I promise to answer them through the course of the story.

Thank you very, very much for reviewing, and please let me know the second I step out of line. I'm writing this primarily because I want to, but I don't want to let you or any one else down. I'm so glad you like it.

Anonymous(envysXsin): Daisukenojo's chakra control has been referenced in passing in the chapter Sand and Floodwater. As a member of the Hatori family he has enhanced control over his chakra, which is a genetic trait rather than a bloodline limit, allowing Raiku to be in his team. It's going to be a recurring thing, so I'm just letting you know now, and I'm sorry if it wasn't clear! XD As for your opinions regarding Ryuu and Raiku, unfortunately I already have plans for Daisukenojo and Ryuu (don't worry, not together), but I'll certainly take what you said into account.

Don't worry about the length of your reviews or the pressure for me to update quickly- I love long reviews and I update as quickly as I can without sacrificing quality (I hope). As well as that, it's only by writing the chapters that Raiku can progress, and I find myself furthering her story simply by knowing where it's going to go.

I'm really touched you've liked it enough to reread it, and enormously pleased that it doesn't get old. Thankyou for sticking with me here!


	18. Everybody Hates Ryuu

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: On behalf of my organisation (me), I would like to apologise for the last chapter. I find it exceedingly difficult to describe fight scenes written by someone else. HOWEVER. The last chapter was designed to be confusing, and I'm delighted to see that I've succeeded! It's going to be made clear. Promise.

Thank you Vanya Starwind.

In this chapter Raiku has a repeated experience, fails utterly to maintain her shinobi person and goes swimming.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

The Rookie and non-Rookie teams remained in the clearing in the aftermath, luckily. Raiku had every intention of staying on the tail of Team Asuma, and this large gathering just made it easier to ascertain who had what scrolls.

'Hey, Sakura-chan!' Ino called to her from across the clearing, waving. 'Over here! I'll fix your hair!'

Raiku, much recovered, sat cross-legged on the tree branch with a faint glow and look of deep suspicion. She didn't like this new ability of Sasuke's. The Plot was suspicious and the Chakra was too pointed. This … was trouble.

The wind abruptly died, earning a sigh from Chouji. 'The breeze was nice while it lasted,' he said, rubbing his forehead woefully.

Final sign.

They couldn't be far away now. She wondered if the already aggravated teams would attack Ryuu and Daisukenojo, and decided they deserved it. She'd been skulking around for _two days_…

'Don't kill me?' someone offered fearfully. Raiku flinched, shuddering at the sound of her own voice. Or, at least an imitation of her own voice. Fake Raiku stepped out of the trees with her hands up in the universal gesture of harmlessness, carefully treading closer to the others.

'Raiku-chan?' Lee blinked, half-rising and easily shoved back down by Tenten. 'What are you doing here?'

Sasuke glared at the girl. 'It's probably a trap- don't be fooled.'

'No! No trap!' the Fake Raiku said hastily. She tried to move one of her raised hands to scratch the back of her head and froze, instantly aware of the numerous weapons pointed at her. 'My… My team and I are moving through the area,' she said cautiously, eyes flicking over the other Genin. 'And they wanted to let you know they weren't hostile… So they sent me, since I've spoken to more of you than they have?'

She ended on a high note, unsure of herself.

Raiku drummed her fingertips on the branch, glowering. They couldn't think this was her! She was… was all wrong! Her eyes were too pale, she was wearing black … _somethings_ instead of wrappings around her shins and her sandals were the wrong colour! Not to mention that her voice was too high pitched and she wasn't smiling out of nervous habit!

All wrong!

'Raiku-chan… can you prove it's you?' Lee asked when it was clear no one was going to take her on her word.

Raiku scowled to herself. Fake Raiku looked uncertain. 'I know that Hyuuga Neji hates me because of my mission to Sand?' she offered.

Raiku knew damn well she'd be more awkward than that, and it only made the situation stick that much worse. She hadn't seen Ryuu and Daisukenojo to indicate this was the point at which they wanted her to strike, and since they would absolutely know where she was by now, that meant she should wait.

'Anyone could find that out,' Neji dismissed. Raiku gave a proud nod. Clearly, anyone could. Go Neji!

Lee shook his head. 'I think she's trying to avoid mentioning what happened on the mission?'

Damn Lee! Damn his misguided attempts to help "Raiku"!

'It… it's sort of embarrassing,' Fake Raiku hedged.

Neji was far too dignified to blush. But he turned his head away. Lee smiled tiredly. 'It's good to see you Raiku-chan.'

Fake Raiku paused. 'You're… not going to kill me?'

'Too troublesome,' Shikamaru decided, and Raiku's shadow-based favouritism instantly vanished.

Fake Raiku dropped her hands in relief, creasing her eyes warmly. 'Thanks!'

Raiku stared at them in horror, fingers digging so hard into the tree branch that it was beginning to crack. There was no way! That jittering coward had passed their inspection? She was an _awkward_ coward, not a tentative one!

Raiku began to crackle as she fumed.

'So why are you all here in the same place, Lee-kun?' Fake Raiku inquired, stepping closer to him. And that was it. Screw the rendezvous point, screw the final signal! No one gave people the wrong impression of how high they were placed in her affections by use of the wrong address! No one!

Raiku braced her feet on the tree and leaped off, propelled through the air faster than the average projectile and sprinting across the ground so quickly everyone else seemed to be standing still. She flung her arm out and used a move Daisukenojo had taught her, called the 'coat hanger'. Fake Raiku choked and slammed into the ground as the blur solidified into Raiku, who promptly kicked the fraud.

'_That's_ for using the wrong level of formality!' she said triumphantly. 'Don't you people do research? And _you_,' she said, looking up from Fake Raiku to Lee, currently gaping. 'How could you honestly think this was me? Look at her!'

Lee realised it was futile to try and point out how eerily similar the two were as Raiku pointed at her victim. He stared in helpless shock at both of them, unable to register fully what had happened. 'Her eyes are _all_ wrong! And her clothes! Look at them! Was this illusion made by some sort of colourblind Rookie!?' she demanded. 'And Hyuuga! I expected better from you!'

Neji's eyes, true to form, narrowed slightly. 'I see you failed to find your team.'

'No, I totally found them. Non-sequester much?' she asked, giving him an odd look. 'This is an illusion that was trying to trick my team that we allowed to infiltrate so that I could incapacitate the one who tried to dispose of me and we could keep an eye on this one, thus lulling the third one that was undoubtedly carrying the scroll into a false sense of security.' She gasped for air, resting her hands on her knees. 'Very long sentence.'

'So where have you been?' Lee asked, blinking owlishly.

'Following Team Asuma. But that's not the point here,' she dismissed. She pointed at the fraud again. 'Look! It's a terrible fake!'

She kicked her again. 'Also? To the selective Byakugan and Sharingan users?' she asked, shooting them both glares. 'The one I caught? Told me this one was a boy! A _boy_, jerks!'

Neji was, again, too dignified to blush. But there was a suggestion that there could, one day, be some form of colour rising in his face.

Still muttering darkly under her breath, Raiku grabbed the ankles of the fraud and dragged them over to a bush, kicking their arms into the leaves to hide them completely. 'You guys all _suck_,' she grumbled to herself. 'I no longer respect you, Hyuuga, and I'm very pissed off at you, Lee.'

'We tried to tell if it was you!' Lee ventured.

'I don't care!'

'You set a trap so that someone would set a trap?' Sakura asked, tilting her head slightly. Ino instantly grasped it and put it at the angle she preferred, still wielding her impromptu hairdressing implement.

'Well it's- trap,' she paused, suddenly wearing a hunted look. 'Trap, I know there was something I was meant to remember about a- oh.' She deflated, running a hand through her hair awkwardly. 'Oh, it's been about two days upside-down now. He's… he's definitely dead.'

'Who!?' Naruto exclaimed, finally cluing into the conversation. Raiku severed the wire attached to her fingers, resulting in a large thud moments later.

'No one!' she said hastily. 'Well,' she began awkwardly, taking a slow step back. 'You guys… seem really busy, and I should probably get back to my team…'

'Wait a second, how long have you been following us?!' Ino demanded.

'A while,' Raiku answered evasively. She took another step back.

'How long is "a while"?' Shikamaru asked, fixing her with a shrewd gaze.

'Since dawn,' she replied reluctantly. Her next step took her to the edge of the clearing. 'And on that note-,'

'_Raiku_,' Ryuu hissed from two inches behind her spine. She shrieked in reflexive terror, lunging several steps forward and spinning around. She clutched her heart, breathing heavily.

'What!? Why did you do that vampire thing again!?'

'You weren't meant to take out the imposter until we gave you the signal,' Ryuu growled, advancing.

'We lost the target,' Daisukenojo added as a sidelong explanation, leaning casually against a tree. 'So he's pretty pissed off. The fake was even more annoying than you are.'

'Thanks, Daisuke,' Raiku said flatly. 'That makes me feel really good about myself.' She backed off as Ryuu approached, yellow eyes burning with rage.

'… Would you like a hug?' she offered nervously, holding out only partially covered arms as she backtracked.

'He's not going to fall for it, toaster!' Daisukenojo called. 'Run!'

'Got it!' Raiku nodded fearfully, turning on her heel and promptly vanishing.

Ryuu froze, slowly turning his head back towards Daisukenojo. Daisukenojo shrugged unrepentantly. 'She was going to run anyway. How was I supposed to know she'd gotten better at using that kind of running?'

Ryuu growled and turned back, hands already forming a quick sequence of hand seals. 'I'll slow her down, you catch up,' he said over his shoulder. He paused before making the final seal, nodding to the current, stunned, occupants of the clearing. 'I apologise.'

He formed the last seal and vanished as though he'd been blown away by the sudden wind, which he technically had.

Daisukenojo shifted awkwardly under the intense scrutiny of the Genin still there, realising he'd _yet again_ drawn the short straw. 'So… How's the Exam been?'

* * *

'Why does this keep happening to me?' Raiku lamented, currently dangling by one foot over a large, beautiful lake. The lake sparkled in the light, casting wavering reflections onto her and Ryuu's faces. Reeds shifted gently in the breeze on the sandy banks, disturbed slightly by the current of the river feeding the lake. 'I try to be a nice person. I've never killed anyone on purpose. I help little old ladies across the road.'

Ryuu sat on the grass next to the water, enjoying the breeze he'd generated. 'So,' he said, without opening his eyes. 'What have we learned?'

'I should definitely never try to hug you,' she said firmly. She screamed as the wire holding her up dropped her several inches. 'Never deviate from the plan!'

'Very good,' he smiled thinly. 'What else?'

'Don't run!?' she tried.

She dropped a few more inches. She raised her arms to protect her face, shaking.

'Right,' he said coolly.

'If I answered right then why did you still drop me!?' she screamed.

'Because you made me chase you.'

'I'm not going to fall for your stupid teleportation trap next time!' she snarled, glaring at him. 'You'll never catch me again!'

Ryuu tilted his head, opening his eyes a sliver. A yellow… ominous sliver.

She dropped abruptly, stopping only when the water grazed her hair. She could smell the damp breeze flitting lightly across the surface, the earthy smell so much like rain. She could feel the cooler air rising off it, and trembled so violently the wire started jerking on the branch.

'I will _always_ catch you,' Ryuu said, looking at her intensely. 'Do you understand me?'

Too petrified to speak, she nodded, screwing her eyes shut.

He tilted his head again. 'Why are you so frightened of water?' he inquired.

'C-can't… swim,' she forced out, trying and failing to curl into a ball.

'That's not the only reason.' His fingers toyed with the wire threateningly.

'I can't turn the… thing off and it reacts badly to water!' she blurted out, wrapping her arms around herself and trying desperately to pretend she was somewhere else.

'How badly?'

'Very very very badly!'

'How much can you generate and for how long?'

'As much as I like, indefinitely! Also, as much as I don't want to, indefinitely!'

His eyebrows shot up. 'That's impressive.'

'Please don't drop me in there!' she wailed.

Ryuu looked at her for a while, not bothering to look away at Daisukenojo when he appeared, red-faced and out of breath.

'God, Ryuu, asshole much?' he asked dubiously, staring at Raiku's violently shaking form. 'How'd you catch her?'

'Lightning will always take the path of least resistance,' he said unhelpfully.

'Water's a good conductor,' Daisukenojo grinned. 'But toaster! We have good news for you!'

'….What…?' she asked weakly.

'We found the hidden scroll!'

'Oh… That's… that's nice…'

'And it's in this lake! We were going to ignore it and just go for what we had set up, but now that you're back do you think you'd like to get it for us?'

'No,' Ryuu interrupted before she could speak, getting to his feet. 'Not without a chakra net,' he specified, easily destroying Raiku's hopes. 'If you can make one good enough to keep her contained, we send her in.'

Daisukenojo cracked his knuckles. 'No problem.'

'Please don't drop me, please don't drop me,' Raiku repeated as a mantra, unable to bear opening her eyes and seeing the water. 'Please don't drop me.'

'How about some trust?' Daisukenojo asked, offended. 'You're hurting my feelings here.'

'Chakra net, if you please,' Ryuu sighed.

'I don't see why I should help you,' Daisukenojo muttered, spreading his hands. 'You left me alone to deal with those bastards…'

'I thought you had a crush on Tenten?'

Daisukenojo froze, the fine, spreading mesh of chakra halting in the middle of its creation.

'I'm not blind,' Ryuu said by way of explanation.

Daisukenojo flushed scarlet. 'Tell anyone and I'll kill you,' he muttered, resuming work.

'I want that net so fine not even a hair gets free,' Ryuu specified. 'Accomplish that and your secret's safe.'

'Sneakiest bastard… ever.'

'I have to agree!' Raiku called, trying to make herself disappear.

'It's done,' Daisukenojo announced, holding in his hands something that, for all intents and purposes, nearly invisible. He handed it to Ryuu, who stepped onto the surface of the lake towards Raiku, quickly and efficiently shrouding her in it.

'Please don't drop me,' she whimpered again.

'It's in the exact middle of the lake, wearing the same kind of mesh as you to keep it dry,' Ryuu commented. 'If you can't swim, I advise you hold your breath, sink to the bottom and walk.' He severed the cord.

It was a testament to Daisukenojo's truly formidably skill that as Raiku splashed into the water, there was no surge of electricity. It was a testament to Raiku's subconscious trust of Ryuu that she immediately let herself sink to the bottom, despite the liquid, terrifying cool of the water. She held her nose closed with her fingers, eyes squinting through the gloom to try and see the scroll. She could hear her heart beating so quickly it was like one continuous noise.

She found herself a new mantra as she forced a foot forward towards where she guessed the middle of the lake was.

_I hate Ryuu. I hate Ryuu. I hate Ryuu._

She stretched her fingers out nervously, groping along the floor for the scroll. Dirt billowed up in front of her face to complete the sensation of suffocation and to add to her claustrophobia as the mesh stretched over her skin.

_I hate Ryuu __**so much**_…

After a short while of false hope and rocks, her lungs started to burn. She froze in terror. _She was underwater_.

It finally struck her. She was blinded momentarily by electricity pouring out of her skin and encountering the mesh, struggling free and distorting the shape but unable to break it in her terrified state. Her fingers closed on something smooth- success!

Please let it be success, she prayed, raising her hand to her face. The Heaven scroll sat innocently in her palm, as though it weren't causing her all this trouble.

She sagged in relief, inadvertently allowing bubbles of air to escape.

Wait.

Her eyes widened.

_Now how the hell was she supposed to get out!?_

_

* * *

_

A/N:Hopefully it's become slightly clearer. If it wasn't- the scene in the last chapter with Raiku and Ryuu/Daisukenojo was the Fake Raiku. Everything else was the real Raiku. They set it up so that a team following them would have the chance to put an imposter in their ranks. Raiku allowed the imposter to take her place, taking care of the person who was sent to make sure she didn't ruin the other team's plan. She then went a different way to ensure the Fake didn't sense her, confident that Daisukenojo would be able to sense her. The signals were designed to let her know how far away they were.

Reviews:

anonymous yay: Thank you for picking that up, it has been corrected! As well as something else that was bothering me. Thanks for pointing it out! I really hate the Forest of Death, and apologise if that comes across in any other aspect of my writing.

envysXsin: I'll update as much as I please! I apologise for the fight scenes. While very visually interesting, they didn't translate well (I didn't translate them well).

M&M: I'm sorry! I've put an explanation above. The entire chapter was the real Raiku except for the scene with Ryuu and Daisukenojo. The chapter was meant to be confusing in order to reflect the confusing nature of the actuul events, but I definitely see where the problem is. If you need further explanation, please let me know.


	19. Hypothermia and Suffocation

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Here in chapter 19, Raiku freezes, Daisukenojo suffocates and Gaara intimidates.

So yeah. Business as usual.

Thankyou Vanya, your efficiency is truly amazing.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters of affiliates.

* * *

Raiku stood, arms tucked under her armpits, hair plastering to her face and scalp, and shivered. Her teeth chattered noisily and she instantly clamped her jaw shut. The inside of the tower was in a state of disrepair, cracks lining the concrete walls and rust corrupting the steel attached. It was lit by sunlight streaming in through worn, old windows, smudged and dirty. Ryuu was singed slightly and even more disgruntled than she was, arms folded across his chest and remaining obstinately silent.

'If you do not possess Heaven,' Daisukenojo read from the giant sign on the far wall. 'Gain knowledge and be prepared. If you do not possess Earth, run through the fields and seek strength-,'

'You'd know all about running, wouldn't you Raiku?' Ryuu sniped.

'Sh-shut…u-up,' she said through chattering teeth.

'-if you open both Heaven and Earth scrolls, dangerous paths will turn to safe ones,' Daisukenojo finished, stubbornly ignoring them. He looked down at the scrolls in his hands, raising his eyebrows. 'Should we wait for the fifth day to open them, or do it now?'

'Now's as good a time as any,' Ryuu said, rubbing his scorched hands gingerly. 'I save you _yet again_ and what do I get? Electrocuted,' he muttered to Raiku. She tried to glare, but was shaking and dripping too much for it to have the desired effect.

Daisukenojo shrugged, grasping the scrolls and opening both at once. He shot them a weird look. 'I've never seen anything like this.'

'S-s-s-,' Raiku broke off, shivering too much to do anything.

'Seal?' Daisukenojo volunteered.

She shook her head, making a fist and then splaying her fingers out.

'Boom? I don't get it.'

'Summon?' Ryuu tried, grimacing in pain.

She nodded, tucking her hands back under her armpits again.

Daisukenojo looked down at the suddenly smoking scrolls. 'Shit.'

'Put them down and back off!' Ryuu ordered, taking a step back. Daisukenojo compromised and threw them away. They hit the far wall and rebounded, quickly engulfed by the smoke billowing up from them.

Raiku coughed feebly, and ended up sneezing.

'If you get sick I am _so_ not healing you,' Daisukenojo warned.

Her answer was another sneeze.

'Long time no see,' a very, very familiar voice said, as the figure of a tall, masculine humanoid became identifiable in the fog.

'That Examiner guy was a summon!?' Daisukenojo exclaimed, stumbling back.

Ryuu's expression flattened. He cuffed the shorter boy over the back of the head.

'H-h-hey,' Raiku chattered out. As the smoke cleared, the bandaged man nodded in her direction.

'You guys have obviously gone to a lot of trouble.' His gaze lingered on Raiku's drenched, shaking form. 'And… effort.' He coughed into his hand, slightly awkward.

'Why the hell did you come out of that summon scroll!?' Daisukenojo demanded, pointing accusingly.

He shrugged, smirking, and put his hands in his pockets. 'The Chuunin were assigned a group to talk to about the next Exam if the group found both scrolls. I drew you guys.'

He gave a slow, mocking clap. 'So, well done.' His smirk turned into a fully-fledged grin as he took in the scorched, drenched and relatively unharmed Genin respectively. 'I guess you guys went after the hidden scroll.'

Instantly two furious sets of eyes slid over to shoot Raiku hostile looks. She sighed, dropping her head. 'S-sorry. H-how many t-times d-d-do I have to s-say it?'

'Shut up, toaster,' Daisukenojo muttered darkly.

'Anyway!' the bandaged man said loudly, interrupting what he suspected would have been a long, repetitive argument. 'I'm Hagane Kotetsu, Team Yamada. Congratulations on passing the Second Exam!'

Raiku sank to her knees in relief, settling in a rapidly expanding puddle of highly electrified water. Kotetsu snickered to himself. 'My other mission is to explain what's missing from up there,' he said, jerking a thumb at the sign on the wall behind him. 'It's something the Hokage wrote for anyone trying to be a Chuunin. Or,' he added. 'Shinobi at all. "Heaven" refers to a person's head, while "earth" refers to the body-,'

'Toaster, remember to breathe.'

'Yeah, speedy, you're going to pass out again!'

'W-will not.'

'HEY!' Kotetsu roared, looming over them threateningly. 'This is important, punks! Pay attention!'

When he was satisfied they were terrified into submission, he continued. 'So if you lack "Heaven" you should gain knowledge and be prepared. So, for example, _none of you are using your heads to think about this_!'

Three winces.

'So you should study, and become smarter and wiser, as well as preparing for missions. Got it?' Kotetsu asked, suddenly cheerful. Raiku stared at him, trying desperately not to draw parallels between him and Yamada. 'And if you do not possess "Earth", you should run through the fields and seek strength. That means if you aren't sound in body, you should train, seeking strength. You got it so far?'

'Yes,' Ryuu said coolly.

'And if you have both "Heaven" and "Earth", then even dangerous missions will become safe ones.'

'What about the letter that's missing?' Ryuu asked, jerking his head at the sign. 'It's not finished.'

Kotetsu grinned, sticking his hands in his pockets. 'It's the letter than symbolises a Chuunin. The symbol for "human" that was on the scrolls goes into that space.'

'Clever,' Ryuu said dryly.

Kotetsu scratched the side of his jaw absently. 'Call it what you want. These past… two and a half days, for you guys, tested the basic survival abilities required of a Chuunin. Since you passed, you've got basics down.' He looked at Raiku, and snickered. 'Well… most of the basics.'

She narrowed her eyes at him.

'But a Chuunin has to do more than just survive- a Chuunin is a leader, in the commander-class, and needs to have the ability to lead a team, and accept the duty of doing that. So it's important that you remember to commit to heart the message up there- the importance of both strength and preparations in missions. If you remember that, you will succeed as a Chuunin.'

He stopped, raising his eyebrows in silent question. 'Huh…' he said eventually. 'That seems to be all I had to tell you. So, I wish you three luck with the Third Exam. You'll have to go and wait for the end of this one.'

'Wait… whe-,'

With a puff of smoke, all four of them vanished.

* * *

They appeared in a hallway lined with typical waiting room seats. There was a potted plant standing next to the grey chairs, leaning against the worn, brick-coloured walls.

'D-dry me off,' Raiku ordered Ryuu through chattering teeth, dripping onto the tiles. There was a clock, ticking obnoxiously high on the wall to her left.

'Whoa, you guys want a room or something?' Daisukenojo asked, holding up his hands.

'Sh-shut up!' she gritted out, hunching to try and conserve body heat. 'H-he can d-do it w-with his t-t-,' she failed to force out the word on the first try, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath before trying again. 'T-t-technique,' she finished triumphantly.

'Daisukenojo, heal me please,' Ryuu said boredly, sitting in one of the uncomfortable grey chairs and ignoring her.

'Aren't you going to do your…' Daisukenojo wiggled his fingers vaguely. 'Wind thing?'

'Absolutely not,' Ryuu said, glaring at Raiku out of the corner of his eye. 'Not after I saved her from drowning and she tried to barbecue me.'

'A-a-accident!' she maintained damply, turning her nose up in offence.

Daisukenojo held up a hand over Ryuu's scorched face, glowing faintly with his pale chakra. 'You two are made for each other,' he grumbled testily.

There was a stunned silence in which both parties simply stared at him.

'Barbecue him,' Ryuu ordered.

'Waaaaay ah-head of you,' she growled, rolling up her sleeves. The threatening demeanour failed when the air conditioned air hit her wet, sparking skin and she instantly covered it back up. She sat on the floor in her growing, sparking puddle and sighed heavily. She stared up at Daisukenojo's focused face, just opposite Ryuu's cold one.

Daisukenojo had a crush on Tenten? That would be… interesting. He was naturally belligerent, argumentative and stubborn. But he was cute, in his way, and growing to be handsome. His red hair, right now practically shaved, was more attractive when long, granted, but his freckles were fading into his tan and his eyes were bright and challenging. He was muscular for his height, now roughly level with hers, and confident in his own physical abilities. That being said, he generally attracted the shy ones, so Tenten would be a challenge for him. Not to mention who Tenten's Plot was saving for the oddly haired girl- Neji.

There was where Daisukenojo would encounter the most trouble, Raiku suspected. Neji was statuesque and beautiful, dignified and powerful. Daisukenojo was the antithesis of Neji's physical attributes, far more earthen in his appeal. In fact…

Unwillingly, she looked over at Ryuu. Ryuu would be more of Tenten's type. Ryuu's face was statuesque in a similar fashion to Neji but not as beautiful, his cheekbones too sharp and his eyes slightly too narrow to imitate it, giving him a more dangerous impression. He conveyed iciness, and his lean, tall frame only enhanced his natural air of sneakiness. His yellow eyes, however, made him seem like some sort of predatory animal, and his naturally light sensitive pupils shrunk in normal light, making them seem cat-like. His grey hair was off-putting for normal girls, but tragically her plan had backfired and he now seemed partial to the short, loose spikes his hair formed.

Raiku looked down at herself, and growled in frustration. Raiku was still stick-thin, long limbed and spiky-haired. Goodie.

Ryuu probably had a crush on no one, which was troublesome. If he would just _get a damned girlfriend_ her life would become much less dramatic. It would be much, much worse if Tenten moved on from Neji to him though, and her gaze had certainly been somewhat interested when Ryuu showed up.

Raiku shuddered suddenly, earning her Ryuu's dispassionate stare. She'd heard two girls from her Rookie year talking about how Ryuu always had something in his mouth. She'd tried to bring up that it was usually a piece of grass, but then they'd started on about oral fixations and _talents_…

She turned faintly green.

It was lucky for Raiku she had the characteristics she did, really: there would be no need to think about someone's… _talents_, for her. Not now, not ever. A layer of cloth surrounded her world, giving her a disembodied sort of relationship with the people connected to it. Contact was, whether people liked to admit it or not, one of the key points of a personal relationship. Without that ability Raiku failed to establish intimate connections, and probably would never be able to. And under that layer of cloth was something much more personal: that layer of electricity. It was, in all senses of the word, her only intimate relationship.

All in all, a life devoid of all physical contact, much less skin-to-skin contact had given her a somewhat detached sense of life, as well as developing something far more inconvenient:

Thixophobia. It also went by Haphophobia, but the former sounded better. It was the family's suspicion she would have developed that chronic fear of touch, though she couldn't know for sure.

'Done,' Daisukenojo announced, removing his hand and instantly, easily breaking her train of thought. He stepped back, proudly surveying his handiwork. 'Not bad, if I do say so myself.'

'Your chakra control has improved rapidly,' Ryuu acknowledged, voice slightly hoarse. 'But you allowed it to go too far from the point of injury. If you keep letting it do it, you'll be drained quicker and the injury will take longer to close.'

Daisukenojo snorted, folding his arms across his chest defensively. 'I know- I'm working on it, alright?'

Ryuu nodded.

'You gonna do your wind-y crap?' Daisukenojo asked, following his line of sight to the curiously absent Raiku. Ryuu shook his head.

'Not yet. Raiku,' he said, raising his voice and snapping his fingers in the air next to her. 'Snap out of it.'

She frowned and gave his fingers a half-hearted glare.

'I think she's going to freeze,' Daisukenojo observed, sitting heavily in the chair next to Ryuu. They folded their arms and tilted their heads at her, considering.

She fidgeted under their gaze, shifting uncomfortably.

'Probably,' Ryuu agreed.

'Do you think if we stare at her for long enough, she'll blush herself out of it?' Daisukenojo grinned.

'For a medic's son, you don't know much about the human body.'

Daisukenojo flushed. 'That was a joke, asshole!'

'Of course,' Ryuu snorted.

For the next few minutes the only sound was the steady clicking of the analogue clock on the far wall, measuring time spent and left.

With a quiet plume of smoke, three more Genin appeared. The beautiful blonde Sand-nin blinked in well-concealed surprise as she took in the presence of three other Genin, but took it in stride. More specifically she took in the sight of the soaking wet, nigh-hypothermic Raiku, and grinned.

'So, I guess a team made it before us after all… eh, Kankuro?' she drawled, crossing her arms and deliberately shifting her weight to one leg.

The cat hat boy smirked.

Raiku sent Ryuu a pleading look, under the none-too-friendly gaze of three sardonic Sand-nin.

'Felt like swimming?' Kankuro asked, grinning hugely.

'N-n-not really,' Raiku forced out, pleading look intensifying by five hundred. She turned to the Sand-nin and managed a somewhat friendly, if stiff wave to the third member, before sticking her hand back under her armpit. 'R-Ryuu,' she said beseechingly, looking over at him again.

Ryuu sighed. 'Promise not to do it again?'

'C-can't,' she said helplessly. 'D-didn't mean t-to d-d-do it at all.'

He rolled his eyes. 'Fine.'

He leaned forward, shifting his hand into his curious seal and concentrating intensely. Raiku sighed with bliss as the air around her shot up in temperature. 'Th-thanks,' she sighed happily.

'The next time you electrocute me, I'm leaving you to drown,' he cautioned. The blonde Sand-nin relaxed into a chair with easy grace, tossing the other team a dismissive smirk. Kankuro took a step closer to Raiku, bending down.

He flicked the side of her mask, earning him a quiet squeak. 'You Konoha-nin have a thing for masks, huh?' he asked, grin spreading for reasons Raiku didn't know but instantly didn't trust.

'I n-need it,' she said, finding speaking growing quickly easy. Or, as easy as it ever was for her. Which was to say: not easy at all but constantly somewhat awkward, regardless of circumstances or company.

He grabbed a small part of it and pulled lightly, tenting it over her skin. 'Why's that, kid?'

'Because I d-don't actually have a m-mouth. I s-speak with t-telepathy,' she joked weakly. 'It's a s-serious illness.'

'How old are you, kid?' he asked, disregarding her terrible joke.

'Th-thirteen,' she answered warily.

'You seem a lot younger,' he said, letting the mask snap back onto her face.

'It's b-because I'm a t-twig,' she said nervously.

'Ah,' Ryuu said to himself, quite at random. Kankuro turned his head, and Raiku instantly used the distraction to inch away along the floor.

'Something to say?'

'No,' Ryuu dismissed him with offensive ease. 'But I remembered where I knew your teacher from.'

'What? Bandage guy? Where?' Daisukenojo asked in surprise.

'He was the one who said he'd eat his own forehead protector if we made it through the storm,' Ryuu reminded him carelessly. 'I wonder if we can still cash in on that.'

A wicked grin appeared on Daisukenojo's face. 'That would be awesome!'

Ryuu expression was perfectly deadpan. 'Undoubtedly.'

Kankuro straightened, as there was no longer a Raiku next to him to quietly menace. 'We'll see,' he shrugged with deceptive carelessness. Ryuu nodded, eyes cool.

'I suppose we will.'

Raiku inched too far. She squeaked again as she ran into something unyielding, twisting herself uncomfortably to try and see what it was. She learned a valuable lesson.

Gaara is even more terrifying from below.

Her eyes rounded to roughly half the size of her face, and blinked. 'H-hey,' she offered slowly, inching back the other way, realising Kankuro was there and standing up instead. She hesitated, unsure of which side was worse, and turned to Gaara again. She creased her eyes into a smile. 'Nice to s-see you again, mystery-nin,' she said pleasantly, holding out her hand to shake.

Gaara's blank green eyes flicked down to her hand, arms remaining folded across his chest.

'It wouldn't k-kill you to- Ryuu, this t-technique is magic,' she said over her shoulder, casting him a relieved look.

He sniffed, looking away.

'But it wouldn't kill you to tell me your name,' Raiku finished saying to Gaara, raising her other hand to rub the back of her rapidly drying hair nervously. Drying meant it wouldn't be straight for much longer, and it was already rising into the air slightly.

Gaara's eyes narrowed minutely.

Raiku tilted her head, eyes still creased. 'Please?'

The clock couldn't bear the silence any longer, and ticked louder. After it had been ticking obnoxiously loud for several minutes, Gaara spoke.

'Gaara,' he said coldly.

Raiku's smile upped in wattage. 'Nice to meet you, Gaara! Well, officially,' she amended awkwardly, dropping her hand. 'Because I've already met you twice. Well, three times. But the second time didn't count because you… didn't talk. And my foot was stuck in _sand_,' she frowned, losing the train of the conversation in favour of her own distractions. 'Sand? I mean… sand? That's just … confusing.'

'Toaster.'

'Also, it seems sort of weird! The only substance that I genuinely have trouble with that isn't water-,'

'Toaster!' Ryuu barked. She yelped in surprise, spinning to face him.

'What!?' she demanded.

'Focus,' Ryuu sighed. 'You were talking to someone.'

She winced, spinning back to face Gaara, ducking her head in a bow. 'I'm sorry! I… uh… get distracted,' she said sheepishly, rubbing the back of her head again. She lifted her head to smile at him again. 'Nice to meet you though!'

'He's called Gaara of the Sand,' Kankuro said from just behind her. She flinched.

'Why does everyone like sneaking up on me…?' she asked herself in an incredulous whisper, before snapping out of it. 'Gaara of the Sand? I'm Raiku of the self-explanatory!'

The clock ticked.

'It's… it's because of… nevermind.' Raiku deflated.

'Because of the electricity?' Ryuu sighed wearily.

'Yes,' she nodded. She set her hands on her hips. 'Well, it was nice to see you again, Gaara! I'm sorry that I sort of rambled.'

Gaara looked at her for a moment, then turned and walked to a seat.

Raiku sighed heavily, shoulders slumping. 'I'm not good with new people,' she said sadly to Kankuro. He snorted and sat with his teammates, clapping her briefly on the shoulder.

'You're an idiot,' Ryuu announced as she walked back towards them.

'Yeah, yeah,' she mumbled.

Daisukenojo took pity on her, as he usually did, patting her sympathetically on the shoulder and moving over a seat so she could sit between them. 'One day you'll meet someone who doesn't instinctively hate your guts, toaster! Promise!'

'And then I'll _kill_ them, because I kill _everyone_ who I spend extended periods of time with,' she muttered darkly, earning her a look from Kankuro.

'We're still alive,' he pointed out.

'I got pretty close to killing Ryuu today,' she countered.

'Yeah, but no one cares about-,' Daisukenojo was cut off, suddenly moving his lips without sound coming out.

Raiku glared at Ryuu. 'Was that necessary? He healed you after all.'

Ryuu looked nonchalant. 'Don't know what you're talking about.' She rolled her eyes.

Daisukenojo continued to flail, clutching his throat. He was starting to go red, tapping Ryuu weakly on the shoulder. Raiku shot Ryuu a horrified look. 'Did you steal his oxygen!?'

'Possibly.'

'Give it back!'

'No.'

She pulled at the leather of her glove threateningly. 'Ryuu…' They glared at each other for a few seconds as Daisukenojo went blue in the background, before he finally growled in frustration and conceded.

'Don't get used to it, toaster.' He snapped his fingers and Daisukenojo inhaled sharply, resting his hands on his knees.

'I… hate… you,' he panted.

Raiku sunk down in her chair wearily, hiding her face. 'Still… the worst team… ever.'

* * *

Reviews:

M&M: I see- I'll do my best to make it clearer.


	20. Mercy and Photophobia

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: And here we have the chapter in which Raiku loses at mercy and being discreet in general.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

By the time Team Gai arrived, Raiku was what for her, passed as half naked.

She sat next to her teammates with a chair pulled away from the wall to face them, casually discussing the benefits of Daisukenojo and Ryuu coming up with a better nickname for her when they appeared. Her sleeves and shin wrappings were on a chair so they could dry- Ryuu's patience only extending so far. They ignored the quiet 'poof' sound and continued disagreeing with each other, right up until the team realised they could actually _see her skin_. It was scandalous, the reaction instantaneous. Tenten blinked in mild surprise, Neji… narrowed his eyes, so maybe it was in reaction to something else- it was hard to tell with that guy- and Lee choked.

'R-Raiku-chan!' Lee forced out, staring at her with wide eyes as the smoke around them began to dissipate. She froze, back tensing as they gaped at it. 'Why are you… you're half naked!'

'I'm fully dressed! Why does everyone always think that me showing my arms is nudity!?' she demanded incredulously. 'Do I exude indecency!?' She looked over her shoulder, shooting him a glare.

He sagged in relief. 'You still have your mask on- that's good!' He shot her a dazzling smile.

Her look turned poisonous. 'You have something to say about my face, Lee!?'

'No!' he denied instantly, taking a step back and not quite knowing why. 'Of course not!'

'It sounds like he does,' Daisukenojo gloated, leaning forward to watch the show. 'You've heard the theories about what's under the mask, right?'

'Theories?' she asked in a low voice, glowering at Lee. Lee cringed.

'I have no theories! I swear it to you!'

'Oh yes- the _theories_,' Ryuu said, eyes sparkling with malicious glee. 'They have bets, you know. I think Naruto started it.'

'They'll never know the truth,' Daisukenojo said, and the two nodded at each other sagely.

'The truth?' Lee asked, unaware they were trying to get him to dig his own grave. 'You know the truth of Raiku-chan's face!? Is it true what they say?'

'What do they say?' Raiku asked warily.

'They say that you are horribly disfigured,' Lee supplied promptly. Raiku let her head fall forward until it hit her knees as her teammates fell about themselves laughing, much to Lee's chagrin.

'That's nice, Lee,' she sighed. 'Now I'm going to curl into a ball and die of mortification.'

'It's… it's not that bad,' Daisukenojo forced out, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye. 'You're not hideous, toaster… not completely…'

'You saw my face by accident!' she accused, leaping to her feet and making a threatening gesture. 'And I did it to save your lives! You would have died if I hadn't!'

'Yeah… the lightning probably ran away when it saw you!' Daisukenojo clutched his sides, trying desperately to contain himself.

Raiku growled, fists clenching and unclenching uselessly at her sides. The disfigurement rumour would have been spread by her family in an attempt to discourage people for taking her inhumanity as mystery and being suitably intrigued, but it still made her uncomfortable. Like it or not Raiku hadn't seen her own face clearly… ever, as mirrors were too easily broken and her family superstitious, so it was somewhat of a sore spot. Ugliness was beneficial, but she could hardly be 'horribly disfigured'… could she?

'Raiku-chan, there's an easy way to settle this!' Lee pointed out, blushing as he tried to be sneaky. Lee was many things, but scrupulously honest was usually one of them, and he was incredibly easily embarrassed. 'You could just… take the mask off.'

She felt eight pairs of eyes suddenly fix on her, and felt appropriately awkward. She twitched under their gaze, trying to avoid the waves of hostility being sent her way by the former mystery-nin.

'I think… I'd rather keep it on,' she said awkwardly. She pulled at it self-consciously, and resolved to never, ever show any skin again.

'I'm sure you're as lovely as the iconic figure of celestial lightning that your name is derived from!' Lee proclaimed, something dangerously close to tears brimming in his eyes.

Daisukenojo tried, he really did.

But in the end he couldn't hold it in. He started laughing again, burying his face in his arms, shoulders shaking with the force of it. 'Her name!' he managed, as Ryuu snickered with considerably more dignity. 'Her name!'

Raiku sighed, sitting down. 'It's really cold in here,' she muttered, having given up on stopping them completely. It could only help her, right? 'This exam better be over soon.'

* * *

When Team Kurenai arrived, it was the very, very early morning of the next day. Raiku was happily curled into a seat with her blanket-that-was-not-technically-a-blanket-but-used-to-be-a-shuriken, her thin frame making it easy for her to fold up into a relatively small amount of space. The pale blue light of the moon spilled in through the small, high windows, casting everything in tones of dark blue and pitch black and giving the world that strange, detached caste.

The smoke appeared silently, no doubt out of consideration for the sleeping Genin on the part of the Chuunin sending the team, but the Genin being sent were hardly as considerate. The pearl-eyed Hinata stepped out silently and looked for a place to sit, keeping her taller, reclusive Aburame teammate close at hand. And then… there was the third member.

'Spastic!' Kiba greeted loudly, grinning as the smoke cleared enough for him to make out her form in the dark. 'Your team made it after all!'

Raiku jerked awake with a quiet sound of protest. 'You'd better not be talking to me,' she mumbled, burying her face into her blanketed knees.

'Whoa, _someone_'_s_ not very cheerful in the morning!' he said with deliberately high volume, making him at least six new enemies. Neji had of course woken up the second they'd arrived, and glowered at them. The moonlight shining off his pearly eyes was particularly terrifying, resembling nothing less than a nocturnal predator.

'I'm a morning person, but Ryuu's not, Kiba-san,' she grumbled, trying in vain to compress herself into invisibility. Kiba froze, finally picking up on why the room seemed so cold. Ryuu's bloodshot, infuriated gaze greeted him when he turned away, the red making the yellow appear sickly and the entire cast of his face demonic as he looked up at the fanged boy.

'_Shut. Up_.'

'Man, you need some sort of happy pill,' Kiba criticised.

Without hesitation or apparent provocation, Raiku picked up her blanket, drew it around her shoulders and moved over to sit next to Rock Lee in the dark where he sat sprawl across two chairs, shoving him over slightly and resting her back against his. Secure in the knowledge he wouldn't be able to touch her skin at this angle, she buried her face in her blanket and tried to ignore Kiba's yelps of pain or Akamaru's barks of protest.

'Raiku-chan,' Hinata whispered across, tugging on her blanket lightly. Raiku cracked an eye open, instantly sending pale light across and into Hinata's eyes. If her status as a human flashlight was worthy of comment, no one felt obligated to do so.

'Yeah?' she whispered, rubbing an eye roughly with her palm.

'C-can you help K-Kiba, please?' she asked. 'I think R-Ryuu-san is suffocating him.'

Raiku dropped her head wearily. 'I moved away for a reason.'

'Please?' she asked tentatively.

Raiku opened her eye again, looking at Hinata. She sighed in resignation. 'Okay. Just stop looking at me like that,' she said quietly.

She shuffled onto her feet in a way completely devoid of anything near grace and towards Ryuu, folding the blanket over her arm and stifling a yawn. 'Ryuu-kun?' she asked sleepily, dragging one of her sleeves off and putting it to rest over the blanket.

'_What_?' Ryuu hissed across to her, yellow eyes flashing malevolently as Kiba struggled for air. She squinted in concentration. Her arm gave off a brief but intensely bright flash before the blue dragged itself back into her skin, leaving it with a faint hum. Ryuu gave a hoarse cry and covered his eyes, instantly releasing the technique Kiba suffered through. Kiba gasped for air, holding his chest.

'Thanks, spastic,' he panted heavily, blinking to clear the dark spots in his vision. Raiku nodded sleepily, shuffling over to Ryuu and dropping onto her knees beside him.

'Ryuu-kun?' she mumbled, leaning to try and look into his eyes. 'Are you alright?'

'Don't… look at me,' he forced out between teeth gritted in pain.

Her brow wrinkled in concern. 'I'm sorry, Ryuu-kun. Are you really angry with me?'

'You idiot,' he hissed, pressing his hand harder over his eyes. 'Your eyes… are like a torch.'

She winced and instantly closed her eyelids until only a sliver of blue could be seen, sending a pale stream of light out to hit his arm, broken by that line of shadow until it hit his hand. 'Is that better?' she whispered.

He cracked his eyes open, and nodded. 'I'm sorry,' she repeated. 'But you're never reasonable in the mornings, so I thought if I asked you'd just kill me.'

He nodded, covering his eyes again. 'Go back to sleep, Raiku.'

She nodded in return, getting to her feet with a yawn and shoving Lee back up into a sitting position, sitting with her back to him and squirming until she was comfortable. And yes, her shoulder blades were sticking into his back and yes; the static from her hair was making his shiny bowl cut slightly dishevelled, but Lee was nothing if not a gentleman and put up with it.

'R-Raiku-chan?' Hinata whispered again, as the Aburame lifted three chairs from the wall and carried them to the other side of the room for their use. Raiku cracked an eye open again, sending another, gentler ray of light across as she started to fall asleep again and the light lessened accordingly.

'Thank you,' Hinata said softly, giving her a rare and beautiful smile. 'F-for helping me.'

'No problem,' Raiku whispered, closing her eyes again. 'Good deeds get forgotten first anyway... so you should repeat them as often as you can.'

'I won't forget,' Hinata promised her very, very quietly and with a certainty that any who knew the timid Hyuuga would be surprised at. Under her mask, Raiku's lips twitched upwards slightly.

'Yes you will. Everyone'll forget me…' she mumbled, trailing off as she fell further into sleep. 'I… have no fate.' It was true- Plots tended to disregard Gairanos, and as a result anyone who had one forgot them simply to make life easier. They stuck out, like a broken bottle in a room full of glasses, and the last thing a Plot wanted was for a Character to cut themselves on them when there were perfectly good _other_ things for them to reach for. But Hinata didn't know that and so just turned away, and because Lee was a gentleman he simply pretended he didn't hear what wasn't for his ears anyway, and in the corner of the room a second pair of white eyes narrowed in suspicion.

* * *

Later than same day (not that there wasn't a large abundance of 'later' and a shortage of 'earlier'), the team from Sound arrived. And all hell broke loose. Or rather, it tried and tripped over itself.

Kin caught sight of the white haired girl still dozing, now sprawled rather comfortably across a chair that a normal person who be hard pressed to even _sit_ comfortably in, legs thrown over the side and neck at a curious angle. She opened her mouth-

Ryuu fixed a bloodshot yellow eye on her, full of limitless rage and conveying images of unspeakable things.

She closed her mouth and glowered, turning away. 'Third rate girl like that isn't worth my time,' she muttered.

The three Sound-nin moved to the furthest end of the room.

Kiba poked the masked side of Raiku's face curiously, squatting next to her chair, grinning at her half-conscious efforts to turn away. 'Heavy sleeper, huh?'

'Don't poke her,' Daisukenojo warned from the scroll he brought with him everywhere, the Hatori name written on it in large letters.

He poked her again and she grumbled in her sleep petulantly. 'Why?'

'Don't poke her,' he repeated, not looking away from the writing.

Kiba jabbed her again. He promptly went slamming into the opposite wall so hard it cracked slightly under his weight, plaster flakes and dust fluttering down to turn his hair into a salt and pepper colour.

He blinked, sparks jumping off his scorched eyelashes.

Daisukenojo absently unfurled more of the scroll. 'I told you not to poke her.'

Raiku turned her head away, frowning slightly in her sleep.

* * *

When the Team Asuma arrived, it was the afternoon of the fourth day and Raiku was awake. She was also trying… and failing, to beat Kankuro at a game called 'mercy'.

'Mercy,' she whimpered, hands bent almost back onto her forearms. 'Mercy!'

Kankuro grinned, pressing harder. 'Who wins?'

'You win! Don't be such a jerk!'

He released her hands with an ominous cracking sound and started cracking his knuckles. 'Oh, you're damn right I win,' he grinned. 'So what do I get?'

'Nothing,' Kiba called over. 'Raiku gives up too easily for you to win anything, sucker!'

Raiku gave him a sheepish grin. Kankuro cursed. 'Again.' He reached for her gloved hands. Raiku whimpered in protest.

'So much for being the first team,' Shikamaru said dryly.

'Ha! Sakura's not here yet,' Ino said triumphantly, setting her hands on her hips.

He sighed, rolling his eyes, and went to wrangle them some seats.

* * *

Kabuto's team arrived in the night. They didn't speak to anyone. They didn't look at anyone. They sat against the wall and made it easy to be ignored.

* * *

On the morning of the fifth day, Team Kakashi scraped in by the skin of their teeth, arriving battered and beaten, to the sounds of heckling from Ino and catcalls from Kiba. Raiku inched back and away from the plot that reached for her.

* * *

Now they stood in an enormous, semicircular room, in their team lines before the Hokage and the assorted Jounin Captains of their teams. The room was circular and the walls shaped into a dome, ending in large windows that illuminated the room. One side was host to a massive sculpture of two hands and an assortment of blank black screens breaking up the grey-green tiles. The floor was obviously worn with numerous previous battles, and an elevated viewing balcony lining each side of the room told the story of previous Exams.

Yamada winked at them, grinning proudly. Ryuu didn't acknowledge it, standing at the front of the line- rather than exuding boredom, she'd realised a long time ago, when tired Ryuu instead exuded a palpable feeling of rage that came off him in almost visible waves of black intent.

She eyed him warily. She was really hoping she didn't have to fight him.

'First off!' Anko exclaimed from the right of the room, wearing microphone headset. 'Congratulations on passing the Second Exam!'

Raiku froze. Damn! She had! What had she been thinking?! Clearly, she hadn't been!

'We will now have an explanation of the Third Exam from Hokage-sama!' Anko announced. 'Everyone- listen well.' She turned and bowed her head in respect. 'Hoage-sama. Please do the honours.'

The Hokage stepped forward, the omnipresent pipe hanging out of his mouth, and coughed slightly. 'The Third Exam will begin. But before the explanation, there's one thing I want to make clear to all of you.'

Hinata edged away from Ryuu, and Raiku winced in sympathy. This wasn't going well already.

'It's about the true purpose of this exam,' Hokage continued. 'Why we need a Chuunin Exam. "To maintain good relations with the allied nations" and "heighten the level of the ninja"… Do not let these reasons deceive you.'

Plot device? Raiku pondered. The Chuunin Exams were clearly just a tool for the Plot.

'This "Exam", so to speak, is…' he stopped, removing his pipe and exhaling smoke. He looked at them for a while before he spoke again. 'The epitome of war between the allied nations.'

Tenten leaned out from behind the back. 'What do you mean?' she asked incredulously.

Raiku sighed. Again with the interruptions. Unbelievable.

'If we go back through history, the allied nations right now were neighbouring countries that have fought each other over and over again. To avoid wasting military power, these countries decided to choose a place to fight. That was the beginning of the Chuunin Selection Exams.'

Naruto gaped, taken aback. 'Why do we have to do that? We're not doing this to select Chuunins?'

Raiku tilted her head, considering it. Ah. It was clear.

'Yes,' the Hokage allowed. 'This Exam does select those who are worthy of that title. But, on the other hand, it's also a place where ninja fight and carry their country's dignity. In this Third Exam, feudal lords and famous people from various countries who may be powerful clients are invited here as guests. And feudal lords from countries with hidden villages and ninja leaders will see your battles. If there's a significant difference in power, the leading village will be flooded with jobs. If a country is seen as weak, the jobs will decrease. And at the same time, countries-,'

It was at this point, to Raiku, the words "country" and "countries" ceased to sound like words, and instead just became sounds.

'- are able to show how their village has grown and possesses excellent military power to adjacent countries. In other words, they can put foreign pressure on them.'

Kiba growled. 'So why do we have to fight with the risk of losing our lives?!'

'A country's power,' the Hokage said simply. 'Is the village's power. A village's power is the ninja's power. And a ninja's true strength is born in life or death battles.

'This Exam is also a place to show off the ninja power of one's country. Since this is an Exam where you fight with your life on the line, it has a meaning, and your predecessors have fought and dreamed of the Chuunin Exams because of it.'

Raiku had most definitely not dreamed of death. Her life was designed to be inherently devoid of meaning.

'But why do you say it's to promote good relations!?' Tenten exclaimed.

'I told you at the beginning not to get confused with that,' the Hokage deadpanned. 'The custom of shaving-,'

Raiku blinked. Shaving?

'-one's life and fighting to maintain balance… that _is_ the good relation in the world of the ninja.'

She nodded, instantly at ease and level with what he was saying. It was like a Gairano theory, only bigger! Her entire life's philosophy fitted with that.

'This is a life or death battle for your dreams and your village's dignity.'

Naruto grinned smugly. 'Heh. I understand now.'

Gaara's expression was as hostile as ever. 'I don't care. Tell us the details of this life-or-death Exam.'

The Hokage nodded. 'Then I will now begin the explanation of the Third Exam, but…' he coughed.

Instantly a Jounin dropped from… somewhere into a respectful crouch before the Hokage, back to the rest of them. 'Excuse me, Hokage-sama,' he said in a low, smooth voice. 'I, Gekkou Hayate, the judge, will explain.'

'Please do.'

The Jounin raised himself into a standing position. 'Everyone. It is nice to meet you.' He turned to face the assembled Genin, coughing in a distinctly unhealthy way. 'Everyone, before we begin the Third Exam…' he broke off coughing again. Raiku stared at him oddly. 'There is something I want you to do…' When his coughs had, for the third time already, stopped, he smirked slightly. 'Fight in some preliminary matches to see who gets to advance to the Third Exam main battles.'

Raiku smiled a dazzling smile. Things were looking up after all.

* * *

A/N: Ahaha, Ryuu's rage is based off my own. You called it '9 o'clock', I call it 'go into an inhuman rage o'clock'.

Reviews:

Vampy: I love you man, but not that much. XD

envysXsin: Ah, faithful reviewer, you're welcome. Any requests, other than more of Daisukenojo being humiliated?

NobodyInParticular: Hello new reviewer! Ehe, I have reviewers... Sorry. I promise Gaara will have a bigger role later, becaue I love him too. Thank you for the compliments!

: Thank you, that flawed/tragic premise is going to be one of the Plots later on, and I'm glad you caught it. I worried I'd failed in giving that impression, so thank you for pointing it out.


	21. Blood and Cereal

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Ah, sorry for the belated update. This is one of two possible Chapter 21 options I had ready, and it took me a while to decide. In the end... I prefered this one.

Vanya, you're brilliant and I'm sorry for the two options.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

Raiku sat on top of the wall of the Gairano Compound, legs crossed as she sat and watched the sun sink down below the horizon. Dim orange and red light bathed her covered face, and a breeze she didn't feel ruffled her hair gently as it blew sweetly past. The sunset transformed Konoha into a place of serenity in this time between the fading of the bright sunlight and the automatic activation of the artificial lights that dotted the streets. Raiku's lips twitched slightly as she watched it, sighing in contentment. Under the guise of cowardice it had been easy to leave prior to the preliminary rounds, waving goodbye to her disgruntled teammates. In the light of the setting sun, it was the best decision for her to have made. Distant explosions sent mild vibrations through the walls as the Genin battled it out to make it to the Third Exam, faint tremors running through the ground and up the walls.

'Pretty,' someone said quietly.

Raiku nodded cheerfully, leaning back on her hands. 'Yeah.'

For a moment there was a somewhat expectant silence, until with a quiet exhalation two hands placed themselves on the wall next to her, hoisting the owner up.

Raiku didn't look away from the scene, tilting her head with that faint smile on her lips that required no crease of her eyes. A smile that simply an expression, not for a purpose.

For a moment the two females sat next to each other, until the taller, brown haired woman spoke, breaking the tranquil silence.

'I heard you left the Exams.'

Raiku nodded serenely.

'I did.'

Mura nodded, expression thoughtful.

Raiku stretched her neck languidly after a few minutes of silence, lips twitching upwards again.

'Do you forgive me?'

Mura paused, eyes flicking over to the cement just to the side of Raiku's leg. After a while, she nodded.

'You've always got time to change your mind,' she said softly.

Raiku's eyes creased ever so slightly, a result of her widening smile rather than affectation.

'No,' she said simply. 'I won't.'

Mura nodded again.

'No,' she said after a long silence. 'I don't suppose you will.'

They sat silently in the growing dark.

* * *

As Raiku entered- stumbled, shuffled into- the kitchen the next morning, scratching the side of her face and yawning hugely, her father serenely sipped his tea. 'Morning.'

'Morning,' she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes and making for the cupboard. She was wrist-deep in a packet of cereal when her father seemed to remember something. He turned a page of his newspaper with feigned nonchalance.

'Your teammate's in the hospital.'

She froze. Sugar practically crystalised on her hand as the high-calorie cereal tried to demand attention from its suddenly reluctant devourer.

He sipped calmly. 'Are you going to go visit him?'

Raiku paused, mechanically raising cereal to her mouth. She inclined her head consideringly. 'Might.'

He nodded absently. 'You want to know which one it is?'

Another pregnant pause. Her father's eyes slowly slid up as his head remained motionless, making direct eye contact. This time he didn't look away as her eyes burned directly into his retinas. She shrugged with slow, deliberate caution. 'I suppose.'

That was the way- cautious, non-specific and noncommittal answers. Show no concern, favouritism or inclination to situations predisposed to Drama. Don't care. Rather, care, but act careless.

'The boy without a last name,' he began, pausing to sip his tea. She grimly hoped he'd choke on it.

'Ryuu?' she asked, too quickly. She winced, glad he was looking back at his newspaper.

'... Hospitalised the Hatori boy,' he finished, glancing at her meaningfully.

'Ah,' she said slowly, trying desperately not to speak as quickly. 'That's... unfortunate.' She chewed on another mouthful of cereal, feeling as though she was trying to tap dance on a minefield.

She narrowed her eyes slightly.

No. This was worse than a minefield. She could _deal_ with a minefield. Any Konoha-nin could do that. This was far, far worse. There was no accurate metaphor for this, or if there was Raiku had no chance of knowing it. This was, simply put, a test.

'Quite badly injured, the both of them,' her father continued on, turning another page. It rustled with unbearable volume in the tense air. 'But one... obviously came out on top.'

'I wonder how he won,' she thought aloud. That was permissible. Gauging strength was permissible.

'He was attacked with a series of chakra blades, or so the report said. He then responded with...' her father stopped to think. The undercurrents of the conversation threatened to pull Raiku under and drown her. 'A rather brutal attack that... sucked the air from his lungs?' he asked himself, frowning. 'Or something of that nature,' he dismissed, finally finishing his tea. 'Were you aware your teammate was so proficient in Wind techniques?'

'I find it hard to believe he improved so rapidly,' she shrugged with carelessness she didn't feel. She looked down as her hand encountered plastic, having finished the cereal without noticing. She put it on the counter.

'Bin,' her father instructed disapprovingly. She obligingly pulled the lid to the bin up, turning her back as she disposed of the packet. She took the opportunity to release a sigh of worry, brow furrowing in concern. Daisukenojo used chakra blades? Daisukenojo knew what those were? Ryuu would use that technique on a teammate?

Ryuu had used that technique... at all?

She smoothed her face as she turned back around, wearing a cheerful smile. 'I'm impressed at their improvements,' she nodded.

Her father finished his newspaper, folding it up and setting it aside. He looked up at her, wearing a similar expression. He was, after all, the one who taught her her stock facial expressions. 'Would you like to visit him? I believe your other teammate is also there.'

'I suppose it would be... suspicious, if I didn't,' she said after some rather keen thought.

'Well of course,' her father said, grinning abruptly. 'Good thinking.'

'I'll see you later,' she said, tilting her head and creasing her eyes further. He smiled at her affectionately.

'Of course. I'll be here.'

Of course he would be, she reflected grimly, opening the door into the hall and making her way to the front door. He would be waiting there to ask, nonchalantly, about her day. He would always, always be casual and always be assessing. Her father loved her, because a father should love his daughter, but he was a Gairano, first and foremost. So was she.

She frowned when she realised, pulling on her sandals. She'd only thought of her reasons for going after she'd decided to go, and that was problematic. She leant back, absently playing with a sandal. This was less than ideal. She needed to withdraw from the situation emotionally and reassess her options. It was at roughly this point that she found herself standing on the dirt between the gates of the Compound, still holding her sandal.

She looked around surreptitiously, blushing faintly. She cleared her throat and slipped the sandal on, brushing herself off self-consciously. She squared her shoulders and nodded to herself. She was evidently- she caught her foot as it tried to step away, yanking it back into position.

_Evidently_ she was more concerned than she'd bargained on. She set off down the slope at a casual pace, or as casual as someone could be while half-walking half-skidding down, jumping lightly off as the slope cut off abruptly and landing lightly on the ground in a shower of earth.

Raiku felt a curious jolt that didn't originate from the usual source of her jolts as she noticed there was no one there to greet her. She put her hands stubbornly in her pockets and set off down the street, casually nodding to the people she passed with an amiable expression on her face. The hospital was that- 'Enough of that!' she snapped to herself as a blue spark jumped between foot and sidewalk after a particularly quick step.

A nearby child gaped at her in horror.

Raiku froze in mortification, colour flooding her face. She beat a hasty retreat in the direction of the hospital, arriving at the double glass doors so quickly she checked the sidewalk behind her to make sure there were no scorch-marks. Satisfied there were none, she entered into a room of Rookie Genin.

She blinked, momentarily taken aback. To her supreme horror, Sakura waved at her. Her eyes were tired and vaguely bloodshot from what Raiku could see, and she sat on the chair in the lobby like she was afraid to move from it. 'Raiku-san... you're here to see your team?' she called, rubbing her eyes in a movement that belied her exhaustion.

'Yes...' Raiku said, stuck awkwardly in the doorway. She wanted to find Daisukenojo and she wanted to check on Ryuu, not to mention how badly she wanted to avoid talking to Sakura in general.

Sakura smiled weakly. 'Naruto's just... checking in on Lee-kun,' she offered.

'I'm going to... I'm going to go and check on him when I'm up there,' Raiku responded, mask easily hiding her cringe. 'But I should...' she made a vague gesture towards the desk. 'Should go and check...'

'Yeah,' Sakura nodded quickly. 'Yeah, you should... I'll... see you later?'

Raiku nodded immediately, relieved at the escape. 'Definitely,' she lied.

Sakura looked relieved, but probably for a different reason. Raiku's suspicions were confirmed when she began to speak again.

'Raiku-san?' she called as Raiku made her way to the desk. Raiku paused mid-step, looking over at her with helpful puzzlement. 'I ...' she gave a self-conscious, but lovely smile. It was beaten, bruised and scratched to hell, but it lit up her face and made the new imperfections seem inconsequential. 'It's just that we haven't ever spoken really, so since we're both Rookie Genin, I thought you might like to get together some time?'

Rejection was bad. Accepting was catastrophic. Raiku opened her mouth to refuse, and something mean niggled at the back of her head. Sakura was smiling at her. Hopefully. No one ever smiled at her hopefully. People smiled at her awkwardly, self-consciously, spitefully and smugly. No one ever looked to a Gairano with hope. Her rejection died on her throat, and she gave her a smile. 'I think...' she said hesitantly. 'I think I'd like that.'

Sakura's smile spread sweetly. 'Thank you,' she said sincerely. 'I'll... see you around?'

'Sure,' Raiku smiled in response, glad the mask concealed her uncertainty. She gave an awkward nod and walked away with brief, jerky steps, stopping at the counter.  
Mayuko glowered up at her.

Raiku's uncertain, tentative and flawed smile vanished in favour of a bright and perfect one. 'Good morning Mayuko-san,' she greeted formally. 'Can you please tell me what room my teammate is in? As well as Rock Lee?'

They had an impromptu glare off, before Raiku paused and looked at her in feigned concern. 'Mayuko-san? Is there something wrong?'

The lowest of blows. Mayuko beamed up at her. 'No problem at all, Raiku-san!' she chirped. Chirping- the ultimate verbal defensive verb. 'Allow me to get that for you.'  
Raiku accepted a small slip of paper with two room numbers written on it in the clear, decisive hand of a nurse who was trying to dispose of someone annoying who they doubted the intelligence of. She leaned forward as Mayuko gestured for her to do so. 'If you could get your _other_ teammate to cooperate with us, that would be good,' she hissed into her ear. Raiku nodded in understanding, straightening.

'I'll try, Mayuko-san,' she said, inclining her head. She turned and made her way to the stairs, checking the paper. Rock Lee was obviously in stable condition and was a substantial risk at this time in terms of Naruto interaction, while Daisukenojo was in an observation ward. She wondered what Ryuu had done to him and what he had done to Ryuu as she padded up the stairs until she reached the appropriate door, pushing it open silently and slipping into the plain white hallway. The sun streamed in, filtered only by clear glass and the windswept leaves on the expansive trees outside, the autumn foliage casting beautiful shaded light onto the walls and floor. Four doors on the right and two suspicious nurses later, she knocked quietly on a closed door.

'Daisuke?' she called quietly and waited for a response. When there was none she slowly slid it open, eyes widening with barely contained surprise as she saw what was inside the cheerful, sterile white room.

'I didn't mean to hurt him,' Ryuu rasped from his seat next to the bed, unable to meet her gaze. 'I don't know where the technique came from.' He let his head fall forward into faintly shaking hands, hiding his face from her eyes. 'I didn't mean to hurt him,' he repeated quietly.

Daisukenojo weakly let his head turn towards her, skin a pale, unhealthy blue that contrasted with her bright hair and freckles to make him look like some sort of extra-terrestrial creature. He managed to nod very slightly, breath rasping in and out of him.

Raiku edged closer, putting a hand on his uncertainly. 'Daisuke?' she whispered, eyes wide and concerned as they scanned his face.

His lips twitched feebly, in what she guessed was a gesture meant to be wry or reassuring. 'Ryuu,' she whispered, blinking slowly. 'Who needs enemies with friends like you?'  
After a moment Ryuu began to laugh hoarsely, sounding strained from his raw throat and shoulders shaking with what looked more like sobs than laughter. Daisukenojo's lips twitched again. He closed his eyes, forcing his head to turn back to Ryuu, who couldn't bring himself to look up. When he'd composed himself, he sighed. 'They said that my technique should wear off in a few days,' he said quietly, as though each word pained him. 'No... lasting damage.'

'That's good,' she said cheerfully, reaching forward to pat Daisukenojo on the forehead. He winced in exaggerated disgust and turned his head away a fraction.

'No, Gairano, it's not good!' Ryuu snapped, finally looking up. She managed not to flinch when the movement drew attention to a deep, clean cut on his chest, so deep it partially exposed bone. 'I'm using techniques I've never learned and I'm using them without ever wanting to! That is _not. Good_.'

Raiku smiled, lifting her hand to rub the back of her head. 'I use things I don't want to all the time... and it would be a lot worse if I didn't stop it as much as I can. So shouldn't you just stop it as much as- that is completely disgusting,' she gagged, putting a hand over her mouth as Ryuu shifted again, revealing a long gash of equal depth stretching from his collarbone to his back, exposing a white expanse of bone with veins pulsing over it. 'Get some treatment!'

Ryuu snarled at her, but it lacked the animosity she imagined it would confront medics with. 'I mean it, Ryuu! Daisukenojo almost killed you too, so if he gets help so do you!' she said, setting her hands on her hips. 'Get help or I'll show you some of what I can do without wanting to!'

They glared at each other as a while, coloured shadows shifting gently over their faces as the tree outside the window swayed in the wind. Ryuu narrowed his eyes and lowered his gaze, looking away. 'Go get a nurse,' he muttered.

Daisukenojo's chest jerked- she started in dismay before realising he was trying to laugh, falling short of the minimum oxygen requirement for vocalisation.

'Alright,' she nodded, giving Daisukenojo another pat on the forehead before she backed out. Left with the sounds of the leaves rustling outside and the faint beeping of the heart monitor, Ryuu and Daisukenojo failed to look at each other.

* * *

A/N: I have reviews! ... Quite a few! Maybe I should stop updating so quickly, if this is the result!

Reviews:

Vampy: Of course I love you. As for who she loves- I have no idea at the current.

envysXsin: (first review) There's the answer to that question- well, sort of. It was an accidental victory. As for the first paragraph- Raiku took off her sleeves to let them dry and sat with her team, is that any clearer? If not, please let me know.

XxXTwilight-SinXxX: I promise to continue to update (I am nothing if not belligerently persistent) and thank you so much for your reviews and compliments. If there's anything you'd particularly like to see, please let me know.

Chatter Box: Ah, thank you. I understand what you mean about the rating, and the rationalisation is as follows: the quick, mild read thus far is directly affected by her age and mindset. As Raiku continues to age and evolve she's inevitably going to be exposed to more mature situations, most likely language and violence to begin with. It's meant to be quick, but I'm slowing it down as it goes (hopefully). Thank you very much for reading and reviewing, and please let me know if there's anything you'd like to see or aspects you'd like to see differently.

Blinkin: Thank you, I've really tried to keep their awareness of the fourth wall a prominent aspect of their lives even as my character becomes distracted by other things. I'm relieved and endlessly pleased to hear that you enjoy this story so much, and I promise to continue to do my best and better. Raiku's abilities are a bitch, and I figure it should keep her free from Suedom. That and her relentless cowardice, which I love. I'll do my best to maintain this level of awesome.

envysXsin (singehandedly and devotedly raising my review count): Daisukenojo's big brother mode is very much automatic- six siblings will do that to you, I suppose. His caring's often eclipsed by his relentless need to call her names, but I'm glad it came across. Thank you for staying with me!


	22. Glass in Stairwells

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Sorry for the delays, but real life is an invasive thing. In this chapter Raiku makes glass and a terrible friend.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

'I hope you're happy, _Raiku-chan_,' Ryuu hissed as the medic bent over him, hand glowing as it hovered over a particularly gruesome slice. '_So_ happy.'

'I am, thank you,' she said primly, sitting on the seat on the other side of Daisukenojo's bed, legs drawn up to sit cross-legged. 'My teammates are going to recover well! Of course I'm happy.'

Daisukenojo's lips tilted upwards, eyes narrowing at Ryuu.

'Shut the hell up,' he growled, reaching across and pulling the oxygen mask up and letting it jerk back to his face with a snap. Daisukenojo winced, eyes watering in pain. Raiku rolled her eyes at the medic, who shot her a similarly exasperated look.

'You really ripped some sizeable chunks out of your friend here, Hatori-san,' the medic criticised as the slice began to close. 'You may have deserved being put in here.'

'Luck,' Ryuu said, glaring over at the redhead invalid. 'Sheer luck.'

'Got the drop on him?' Raiku whispered to Daisukenojo, who nodded wearily. She grinned as Ryuu growled at her, accepting the knitting of his flesh without complaint or flinching. She could admire that sort of pain tolerance, given that she had none.

'My hand seals began to channel a chakra type I was unfamiliar with,' Ryuu muttered, glaring at her as though he could hear every word. 'I had to quit mid-seal, and when I did so, he attacked.'

Raiku blinked in surprise. 'Sneaky.'

'The next time it got away from me, I couldn't afford to stop,' he said, glowering over at Daisukenojo. 'Which is why we're _here_.'

'Your chakra blades sound very impressive,' Raiku said to Daisukenojo sincerely. She tilted her head curiously. 'Was it a modification of your mother's medical chakra scalpel technique?

He nodded weakly. Raiku beamed. 'That's excellent, Daisuke-kun!' He smiled slightly in response, eyelids slowly drifting closed. The medic glanced over to the various monitors attached to him, quick and assessing gaze easily taking in the relevant information.

'Gairano-san, you may want to go take a walk,' he said gently, removing his hand from the thin, angry red line that marked what had once been a horrific gash. 'Hatori-san is about to undergo another round of treatment, and I don't think he would want you to see the effects.'

Raiku looked over to Ryuu reflexively, brow creasing in concern. He gave a small nod. She smiled. 'Alright,' she agreed, sliding her legs off the chair and rising to her feet. 'I should go check on Lee-san anyway. Should I stay away for long?'

'No more than half an hour,' the medic guessed, moving to the clean cut through Ryuu's eyebrow.

'Thanks for getting my face, asshole,' Ryuu grumbled to the increasingly unconscious redhead.

Raiku smiled at him happily. 'I think the scar makes your face more interesting,' she commented, nodding to herself. 'Less like Sasuke-san!'

'You thought I looked like that overly emotional bastard?' Ryuu asked in a low, dangerous voice.

'You're less pretty and more handsome,' she offered awkwardly. '...Now,' she added guiltily.

'Run. Run now.'

'Running!' she confirmed cheerfully, saluting with two fingers and sauntering out the door. She slid it shut behind her, exhaling heavily to release her tension. Ryuu's symptoms were characteristic of a Drama Rank Three- the maximum rank for someone who wasn't Naruto or one of his close friends. Mysterious, uncontrollable techniques, strange and borderline traumatic events as well as scars that enhanced rather than detracted from attractiveness. She'd have to inform her family, and get him moved up in the Ranks from his original Two. Daisukenojo could be moved from borderline Two to One again, which should balance it out nicely. She smiled to herself faintly, hand still resting on the door. At least they were both alright, though Ryuu seemed more frightened than Daisukenojo. She could empathise with the fear of one's own capabilities, though it had been a while since she herself had felt it. He would learn to deal with it- he really was strong. Daisukenojo's current state of debilitation would serve to give him motivation to learn control, as she had failed to do.

She nodded to herself resolutely, fishing the paper with Lee's room number out of her pocket and checking it again. He was a floor up, in the more restive ward for the patients that required less paranoid observation and more time for only casually attended recovery. She wondered who he had had to fight, and decided not to ask him.

No need to prompt revelations or bonding, no sir.

She made her way back to the relative darkness of the stairwell, eyes casting a gentle, illuminating glow over the walls as she padded up the steps. A low, gentle sound issued from somewhere below, and after a moment's consideration she labeled it as air from the air conditioning escaping through a bad seal on a door. She pulled on the door handle to the next floor, yanking harder as it refused to budge. 'Come on,' she muttered to herself, continuing to pull. 'Don't do this...'

Unsurprisingly and rather rudely, the door refused to open.

She sighed, turning around and walking quietly down the stairs to the other floor. She'd been gone roughly... two minutes, leaving about twenty eight until she could return to a hopefully less incensed Ryuu and a conscious Daisukenojo. She reached her own door and pushed down on the handle, trying to pull it open. More surprisingly, it gave a pathetic groan and refused to budge, only shifting slightly in the door frame. Raiku sighed heavily, picturing a skeleton lying in the stairwell until hospital maintenance could finally be bothered to do something about it. That would be her luck, really.

She crossed to the banister and leaned over to check that the stairwell below was clear, squinting into the dark that the windows on the top floor high above failed to illuminate. She sighed heavily, hanging her head briefly before turning and making for the stairs to the lowest floor.

'Where were you, Raiku?' she imitated to herself. 'Oh, I was just stuck in a stairwell.

'Well why didn't you just escape, Raiku? What kind of kunoichi are you?

'Obviously? A pretty poor one,' she muttered to herself in conclusion as her feet touched the cold tiles of the lowest floor. She slipped slightly, grabbing the banister for support. She looked around self-consciously, smoothing her hair ineffectually to cover an embarrassment no one was there to see. She sighed yet again, shoulders slumping. 'I am the worst ninja ever.'

The hissing sound grew louder as she crossed the tiles to the door, confirming her suspicions. 'AHAaaand it's jammed,' she began in exclamation and ended in grumble. She let her head fall forward to thunk onto the wood, hoping someone outside would hear. No real kunoichi would get into a situation like this. Clearly this was karma kicking her in the face. A _real_ kunoichi would simply put chakra on her feet, walk up to the window and climb to freedom. Or better yet, just jump up. _Raiku_, who was probably _not_ a real kunoichi, would have to wait for maintenance. And yes, she could jump up and yes, she could walk up. But the fact of the matter was, quite simply, that she didn't feel like it at the moment. She could wait for thirty minutes then escape, given that it was relatively peaceful in the stairwell and the stairs themselves bore little risk of Naruto Encounter. She exhaled in relief and turned her back to the door, sliding down into a sitting position.

Ah. Freedom from Naruto.

The hissing stopped abruptly and she concluded she must be blocking the hole in the seal, closing her eyes to better help her relax. The hissing picked up accordingly, changing to a higher frequency. Raiku frowned slightly, shifting to try and block it again. Shortly after this shift something soft and rank with blood slid up to press on her masked mouth, provoking an immediate and oddly mild response. Her eyes flew open, arms coming up to feel her face. She pulled a hand away when the substance gave but the pressure didn't alleviate, widening her eyes to increase the range of light and trying not to squint counter-productively. Her hand was shoved roughly back until the back of it slammed into the door, jerking so abruptly her shoulder gave an alarming twinge. The brightness of her eyes shot up until the eerie blue glow reached several feet away, still failing to show her would-be attacker. She kept her other hand out trouble to stop it from suffering the same fate as the other, trying desperately to remove her glove without drawing attention to the hand or using anything but her straining fingers and the floor. She stubbornly refused to let the sounds at the back of her throat escape, shoving as much power as she could into her eyes until sparks threatened to escape. The floor and the rough grains lying on it scraped the gradually exposed skin. The hand against the other cracked slightly as the sand pressing into it shoved down harder, sending a steady stream of pain up her arm.

Sand. Why was it _always_ sand?

She jerked her head up, trying to free her mouth long enough to force out a question as the waves of blue light eventually revealed a familiar, pale face. In the pale blue light his hair looked a strange, purplish shade of brown, eyes reflecting the light back at her eerily. No reflection could hide the open animosity, or the first smile she'd ever seen on Gaara's face.

It was more akin to Ryuu's displays of aggression than Daisukenojo's open, bright one or her own fake, distracting ones. It promised her unpleasant things and nothing else, despite being little more than a contemptuous curl of his lip.  
'You're weak,' he told her in a low, dark voice. He crouched amidst the slithering sands, perfectly still in contrast to the continuous shifts. With a particularly painful and unnatural twist, Raiku's hand was finally free of its leather prison. She slowly, cautiously drew it back to her side, staring at him with wide eyes.

'It would be easy,' escaped him in a low hiss. 'So... easy...'

Raiku panicked and threw her hand up, a strangled sound forced from her throat as electricity surged out of it with almost protective urgency, slamming into the wall of sand that instantly rose to defend him. Once the flash had cleared, Gaara's distorted face glared at her through a misshapen and transparent wall of flawed glass, the melted sand slowly oozing onto the floor.

Raiku's only free hand was free no longer, crushed back into the door with agonising force by the wrist, the sand carefully avoiding her glowing skin. Gaara shifted forward slightly, eyes narrowing hatefully. 'Are you still glad to see me?' he asked contemptuously. Raiku ruefully thought about how _Sakura_ would never have this problem.

The sand shifted, lowering on her face slightly and pressing harder on her windpipe.

'Well?' he demanded. 'Are you still glad to see me, _Raiku_?'

Raiku coughed hoarsely, breath coming in wheezes. 'Sure,' she forced out. 'But the sand... is not as ... thrilling.'

In her defence, Gaara really was ruthlessly pretty.

It just wasn't fair.

'It sucks...' she wheezed before she or the sand could stop her. 'That you're... prettier... than me.'

Gaara's expression didn't change.

'Joke,' she added before the sand mercifully covered her mouth again, probably to stop her foot from landing in it as it so persistently tried to do. The Gairano part of her brain nodded in approval of this remarkably undramatic death, while a more incensed and possibly leather and mesh-clad part stepped up to the plate and closed its eyes, rubbing its figurative hands together. Quietly, the world exploded in a flash of white and a surge of intense and localised heat, restrained in a way she would never be able to consciously achieve. Raiku struggled out of a pool of rapidly solidifying glass with a gasp, clawing her way out of the thick ooze as the light faded from the area, sucked into her skin.

'Yeah,' she panted, on her hands and knees in the middle of the sticky, unpleasant puddle. 'Freaky is good. Good freak,' she congratulated herself. 'Covered in glass. But alive!' she panted to Gaara with a relieved smile, right up until she realised he was standing, unscathed, not far from her and probably still fully intending to crush and kill her.

She slumped wearily, dropping her head. 'You're not a very good friend,' she sighed. 'But I suppose it gets better with practice.'

'I don't have friends,' Gaara told her coldly, turning away with grace that, given the _giant gourd_, surprised her. He said nothing for a moment and simply stood with his back to her. 'I'll kill you one day,' he told her without looking back, and vanished in a (smallish) swirl of sand.

Raiku collapsed into the glass in relief, letting her head fall back and keep the current running through. 'Okay,' she sighed. 'He'll kill me one day. Okay.' Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat, escaping in something that sounded like a hiccupping sob more than a laugh. 'But...' she managed, tears of relief welling up in her eyes. 'It wasn't so easy to kill me, huh?'

The next time she tried the door to Rock Lee's floor, it opened easily. Somehow she'd known it would.

* * *

'What the _hell_ happened to you!?' Ryuu demanded as she trudged back through the door after a highly eventful trip to see someone who didn't even have the good grace to be conscious. Daisukenojo's colour was better- slightly less blue- and he managed to widen his eyes when he saw her.

Raiku's expression was flat. 'I fell in the stairwell,' she said darkly.

Ryuu moved to stand, eyes narrowed. She held up a hand to stop him. 'I'm going to have a shower,' she announced. 'And I'm taking your change of clothes!'

Ryuu growled, low in his throat. Raiku rolled her eyes. 'It's that or take this stuff off and barbecue everyone! Is that what you want?!' He paused, taken aback either at the promise of relentless violence or partial nudity.

'Nice scar,' she added brightly, pointing at the new, thin white scar that cut through his eyebrow at the exact point at which it curved sharpest. Ryuu didn't respond, just settling back in his seat. He reached for the small black bag beside his chair leg and tossed it over grudgingly, scowling.

'Thanks Ryuu-kun!' she said, saluting cheerfully and trudging to the small, inconspicuous shower door. As it slid shut behind her and the water started, Ryuu tilted his head. He was far from stupid. She wasn't wearing both gloves, and removing them was one of her last, close contact 'techniques'. He silently loped out of the room, not bothering to inform Daisukenojo of where he was going, confident that the shorter boy would assume correctly.

* * *

A/N: Raiku is really, really inconvenient for Gaara. She's just... always in the wrong place.

Reviews:

M&M: I can't think of a way to do that, but if you sign up I can send it through docX. I'm glad you like the story so much, and also that the conversation was as illuminating as I'd hoped. Thanks for reviewing.

envysXsin: I'll try to continue with my speedy rate of update, but it may have to be every _other_ day as Raiku (and thus the writing) matures. Daisukenojo's attack was intentional, but Ryuu's wasn't. Daisukenojo is many things, but a chicken isn't one of them. Thanks for reviewing.

XxXTwilight-SinXxX: Mura will be a recurring character, yes. Even without the orders from the family, Raiku was going to drop out. Death? She thinks not. Thanks for reviewing!


	23. Red, Black and Expendable Poison

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: The shortest chapter of this story, by far! Ahahaha. Thanks to my beta, the lovely Vanya Starwind.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

'So the bastard finally went home?' Daisukenojo asked, sitting cross legged at the head of his bed, oxygen mask exchanged for a thin tube taped under his nose. Raiku, sitting in a similar fashion on the other end, nodded and put down a four of Hearts from the half-deck of cards in her hands.

'He said he'd had just about enough of us in the past two days,' she sighed, laying down four cards grudgingly as he put down a king. Daisukenojo collected the cards up and added them to the bottom of his own half-deck, smirking faintly. The effect was somewhat ruined by the faint wheeze that made her want to hand him some sort of cough medicine. 'That,' she admitted. 'And I may have burnt his hair. A little.'

Daisukenojo snorted in amusement, resulting in her immediate flush. 'Stop laughing at me!' she scolded, sending a card flicking through the air to hit him in the face. 'It was an accident! And then he had the nerve to trip me over when I tried to run! I hate it when he does that!'

It was impossible for him to be able to catch her. And he always, always did. Each time she took a step to flee he would know, and not even perfect speed would stop the air from seizing around her legs, withholding from her lungs or from her own power dragging her into one of his traps.

He always caught her.

She'd known he would the moment he'd said it. Ryuu never lied. He bent the truth and he evaded it masterfully, viewing it only as a picture that could be deconstructed for easy subterfuge. If he could be persuaded to talk for long enough it was possible to see the pieces of the truth and how they fit together, with him sitting in the middle in his web of almost-lies. It was the one weakness he refused to part with. He never lied.

She put down a jack and won the pile, tucking it in place under her own thin stack with a quiet smile. Daisukenojo groaned, looking mournfully at the cards. 'There go my aces,' he muttered ruefully.

Raiku flashed the jack of Spades and a wide grin. 'One jack can win the game.'

'You always cling to that card,' he said, rolling his eyes. 'It's the one card I can never win off you.'

She shrugged carelessly, shuffling her cards. 'I have an affinity with Spades,' she said easily, putting down a miscellaneous number card. 'They're my thing.'

'You know they symbolise death?' Daisukenojo asked dryly, putting down a queen of Diamonds.

Raiku smiled faintly, producing (to his profound disgust), yet another jack. 'Yeah, well,' she said eventually, gathering the cards up. 'I'm not really suited to the red suits.'

'Why?' he asked, producing his own jack of Hearts, the only jack he'd managed to keep, and placing it over her jack of Spades, so close to victory he could smell it.

She shrugged, drawing a queen of Clubs out and placing it casually over his jack of Hearts, as though she hadn't just ruined his best chance of winning. 'Red's not my colour.' She looked up briefly, smiling at him. 'Though, red suits you, Daisuke.'

He rolled his eyes. 'Ha ha,' he said, perfectly droll. 'Enough with the hair jokes.'

She just smiled, picking up the last few cards and shuffling the completed deck. 'Again?' she offered.

'What are you playing?' Ryuu asked from where he leaned against the doorframe, a piece of grass casually sticking out of his mouth and hands tucked into his pockets. He'd gone and changed his clothes and obviously showered, hair and skin still slightly damp. She wondered if his mother minded how infrequently he came home.

'Beat your neighbour,' Raiku said, holding up the deck. 'Would you like to play?'

'What do I get if I win?' he asked, narrowing his eyes shrewdly.

'You won't win,' Daisukenojo snorted, breaking into a brief fit of coughing. 'She always wins.'

'Oh?' he asked with an arrogant tilt of his head. She smiled at him cheerfully, pulling a card from the middle of the deck and turning it over to reveal her beloved jack of Spades.

'Pretty much,' she said, still smiling. Ryuu just looked at her for a moment, and for a brief and uncomfortable second she felt oddly ill at ease but for the card in her hand, before he grabbed the chair she had been using previously, turning it to straddle it backwards and resting his arms on the top.

'Hurry up and deal,' he said, looking at her too directly for her to really be comfortable. She nodded obligingly, shuffling the cards again.

'Which suits suit Ryuu, toaster?' Daisukenojo asked, resting his chin on his hand, watching her fingers with a bored expression. She knew he found the whole hospital stay idea to be so incredibly dull that he'd considered escaping, hence the card games.

She glanced over at Ryuu, watching her through heavy lidded golden eyes, chin resting on his arms. Oh, Ryuu was red. Raiku wasn't the expected black sheep, but these two were mostly definitely red. Daisukenojo was closer to Hearts- his hard earned and protective love gave him that title.

She smiled. 'Red. But he's more Diamonds than you are.' Ryuu had sharper edges and a slightly colder heart.

But they were both still so very, very red. Raiku was black. The most unlikely of black sheep.

Daisukenojo scowled. 'Are you saying he's worth more!?'

'No!' she denied hastily.

'So he's worth _less_,' Daisukenojo smirked.

'No!' she exclaimed, leaning away from the glaring Ryuu. 'He's just different! Different! Stop putting words in my mouth!'

Daisukenojo puffed his chest out with masterfully concealed difficulty. 'Yeah! Totally worth more than _Ryuu_! Thanks, toaster!'

Raiku lunged forward, dragged back by Ryuu by her underarms. She dug her hands into the blanket to stop him from pulling her towards him, murder written on his face. 'Stop framing me!'

Daisukenojo just laughed as Ryuu started to- cheerfully, as he no longer bothered to hide his tendencies as a sadist- strangle her.

* * *

'So why is it?' Mura asked, sitting next to her on the wall as the sun began to set. The wind carried the sweet air to her nose and she inhaled obligingly, wondering why the air was always clearer on the walls of the Compound, sitting next to the girl who ruined her life. 'Why is it red doesn't suit you?'

Raiku shrugged as the wind ruffled her hair, sending small, brief sparks from the rough strands.

'The people that suit black can't be suited to red.'

'And I?' Mura asked.

'You suit red, Mura-san,' Raiku said simply, as the sky faded to dark purple behind them and dark red before them.

'And you?'

'I suit black.'

'What does that mean?' Mura pressed.

'It means,' Raiku said eventually, as the first stars began to quietly glow in the sky above them. 'That one day… I'll probably kill you.'

'Will you kill your teammates?' Mura asked, letting her head fall back so she could look at the stars. 'With their red, red souls?'

Raiku shook her head, smiling faintly.

'Why?'

Raiku's eyes traced the last dregs of sunlight as they flickered out of life on the horizon, ignoring the stars. She'd seen heaven in the skies of the Wind Country, where Mura would never go. 'Probably because…' she said eventually. 'They'll kill me first.'

'Because you're a Gairano and they aren't?'

'Because I'm their teammate, and they love me.'

Mura's head fell forward, eyes bearing the same hunted expression they had worn when Raiku had first found and retrieved her. 'Because they love you,' she repeated quietly, bitterly. 'We're deliberately expendable poison. Every one of us. Poison.'

Raiku shot her a wry grin, eyes flashing in the fading light.

'Would you like to play a card game?'

* * *

A/N: Yes it's different. Stop giving me evil looks.

Reviews:

envysXsin: Wrought; bringing people together accidentally. x3 Thank you for telling me that, it's awesome. I tragically require sustenance from my real life in order to continue, but this short of a chapter isn't a result, it's actually because this was the longest I could make it without convoluting what I wanted to get across. Thank you for reviewing! (Also, that moment where you blushed and everyone stared? That's how Raiku feels allllll the time.)

Blinkin: It is the worst nightmare of a Gairano. They're also the 'faceless ninja' that get mowed down by main characters, so it's also the most expensive nightmare they have. Other than Naruto, of course. The idea of Gaara is one I've been discussing with my beta... the agreed result is Raiku running, shrieking, through the streets saying: 'The power of obscurity compels you! THE POWER OF OBSCURITY COMPELS YOU!' So... since I love tormenting her, it's a possibility. Thanks for reviewing.

Impatiens Psittacina: I've gone to the DocX part of the user area and proposed a connection, if you accept it I'll send the doc through. It doesn't spoil anything, promise. Thanks for reviewing.


	24. Traumatising Ramen and Sad Chopsticks

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Ah, thought I was gone forever, did you? Nothing so dramatic- my internet stopped working. Thank you Vanya Starwind for the beta, and all readers should thank her as well: if she wasn't so quick, you'd get this another day.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

There would be a month between the preliminaries and the real Third Exam, and a week after his agonisingly painful defeat, Daisukenojo had been released into the loving arms of friends and family. Well, friends and family with the exception of Raiku. Raiku wasn't there, because Raiku was in hell.

Well, she conceded, staring grimly down into her bowl of ramen as the bustling chef and his daughter conversed happily with the blonde Drama Magnet sitting not two seats from her, at least it was hell with food provided.

That morning had started much like any other, with a gratuitously large breakfast and her father's envious eyes demanding to know where she put all that food without becoming morbidly obese. After that she'd settled in for a quiet day at home- Yamada was busy putting Ryuu and Daisukenojo through the most harrowing punishment he could think of. He hadn't been willing to 'emotionally destroy' her with details, but it involved his wife and the tallest tree in Konoha. After that, she hadn't asked many questions. It was at roughly midday her day started to decline, and decline spectacularly.

The walls shook. A picture came loose and the glass of the frame shattered as it hit the ground, crushed further by a falling chair. 'Code Blue!' her father yelled over the quaking, picking up a broom on one hand and a scroll in the other. 'Run for it!' He made for their not-so-hidden room, cursing loudly over the crashing and shuddering, kicking a fallen door out of his way.

On her part, she leaped over the debris that had formerly been furniture, staggering to the doorway leading out of their house to try and remove herself from the sound long enough to remember what a Code Blue entailed. And as the quaking stopped and the shaking dropped, she opened the door and remembered, vividly, what a Code Blue was as she stared into the very blue but not quite as blue as her own gaze of Uzumaki Naruto.

He grinned at her. She stared at him, mute with shock and a large, icy dose of horror. 'Hey Raiku-chan!' he said, giving her a cheesy grin. 'We're here to take you to lunch!'

Raiku could only stare. '…"we"?' she managed eventually as she clutched the doorframe for support.

'Get out of the way, Naruto!' a very familiar voice snapped, and a feminine white hand rudely shoved Naruto to the side. Sakura sent her a bereaved smile as Naruto cleared the way for Raiku to see her, rubbing the back of her head awkwardly. 'I'm so sorry, Raiku-chan, but he just wouldn't quit once he found out where I was going…'

'This is because of the bet, isn't it,' Raiku interrupted, expression flat.

'Yes,' Sakura said, hanging her head in shame. 'I'm sorry.'

Raiku sighed, looking back over her shoulder to a deeply traumatised father, brandishing a broom out of sight of both of the guests. 'I'll be back later, Dad!' she called. He instantly dropped the broom, clasping his hands together in a pleading gesture. She shot him a murderous look and slammed the door behind her. 'Let's go!' she said bravely, squaring thin shoulders.

And that in and of itself, would have been alright. Two people for lunch, even if one of those people was Naruto, were okay. Even if the Gairano part of her shrieked loudly and flailed in terror like Raiku so often did herself, all other parts could handle it.

It was what had come after that that was worse.

Raiku poked her cooling ramen with a sad, sad chopstick.

Oh yes. So much worse.

They'd made their way down the incline, Sakura and Naruto managing to do so with far more grace than she ever had, despite the fact she'd been doing it her whole life, before they started towards the downtown area.

'So, Raiku-chan,' Sakura had said as they walked in vaguely awkward silence. 'How's your teammate? Daisukenojo, right?'

'Yeah,' Raiku confirmed, sticking her hands in her pockets. 'And he's fine. But he's really annoyed that Ryuu managed to get one over on him.' She rolled her eyes, exchanging knowing looks with Sakura. 'He's never going to let it go.'

'Sounds like Naruto and Sasuke-kun,' Sakura sighed, earning an indignant cry from her blonde teammate.

'I'm much better than that bastard!' Naruto exclaimed, puffing his chest out proudly. 'You just watch! I'm going to kick his ass one day!'

'You never will!' Sakura snorted, turning her nose up at him.

'I'm sure you will,' Raiku grinned despite herself, leaning forward to nod across at him. Naruto blinked in surprise and blushed faintly, giving her a thumbs-up and a radiant smile. It was at roughly that point she realised she sounded like she was choosing to believe in him, while she simply knew it to be true. The Plot alone told her that Naruto would not only defeat Sasuke but go on to greater heights and she was just acknowledging it. She hurriedly masked her dismay with a cough, carefully ignoring the irate look Sakura was sending her.

She narrowed her eyes slightly as she turned back to the road ahead, annoyed with herself.

_Slip 1._

She broke into a cold sweat.

'That makes you as much of an idiot as Naruto,' Sasuke said contemptuously from her left. Raiku shrieked, dancing a few steps away and clutching a hand to her suddenly panicked heart.

'Don't DO that!' she said, pointing at him accusingly. 'Everyone does that to me and it's _not funny_!'

'Like hell it's not!' Naruto laughed and was sent a barely concealed smirk by the Uchiha as a reward.

'Good morning Sasuke-kun,' Sakura said cheerfully. Raiku blinked in surprise, and wondered when Sakura's voice had gotten so high. 'I thought Kakashi-sensei was taking you for extra training?'

'He was called to the Hokage,' Sasuke replied in a way reminiscent of Ryuu. 'We get back to it tomorrow.'

'I don't see why _you_ get extra training, bastard,' Naruto muttered. Sasuke ignored him pointedly, earning a low growl.

Raiku discreetly tried to edge away. This was not good. This was so very, very _not good_. She had to leave, and ensure it never happened again. Ever. She made it all of two metres before Sakura got a hold of her sleeve, not quite pulling her back but holding firmly enough to catch her attention.

'Raiku-chan, please don't let them scare you off!' she said in a way too close to pleading for Raiku to be comfortable. Raiku cringed slightly, hunching her shoulders self-consciously and guiltily as Sakura's bright green eyes shone imploringly. Those same eyes were also vaguely annoyed, but that was easily overlooked. Raiku narrowed her own eyes at her slightly, shrewdly. She shouldn't feel bad. One pink haired girl shouldn't be able to make her feel bad. It had to be because they both had spectacularly unimaginative names. Had to be.

'I think I should come back another time,' she began reluctantly, cut off as soon as her sentence's meaning became intelligible. Naruto seized her other arm, linking it with his and turning towards the corner.

'Don't let Sasuke-bastard throw you off, Raiku-chan! We'll go to Ichiraku and he'll go off and make brood-babies with the Hyuuga jerk,' he grinned, pulling a face at Sasuke over his shoulder. Raiku cut off her own brief laugh, hiding it in cough and biting her own tongue.

'Brood-babies,' she managed, almost going cross-eyed with the effort it took not to laugh. Naruto shot her a wicked grin and managed to ignore Sakura's vile glare, to say nothing of the truly evil one being sent his way from Sasuke, trailing behind them.

Raiku's sad, sad chopstick joined its partner next to the bowl as the four watched them her like hawks, only occasionally bothering with an obviously fake conversation. If she'd known when Sakura said she wanted to 'see her more', she meant her _whole team _thought she was really damn weirdand would _go with her_ to see Raiku, she would have refused. Hopeful, sparkling eyes or not, she would have refused and kept her damn sanity. Hell, they'd met their team leader on the way and he was only _too happy_ to show up and mooch off their hospitality.

At the moment Sakura sat on the stool to her right, eating her ramen with a long-suffering look. She hated ramen, or so Raiku had gathered. Which made this restaurant a somewhat odd choice, but she would have been left with the same problem in any case, so she didn't particularly care.

And now Kakashi sat on her left and Sasuke sat on _his_ left, leaving Raiku smack-dab in the middle of Drama central, to ferment in her misery. She sighed again, looking down at her food. She couldn't even eat it, because she second she lifted her chopsticks four pairs of eyes- and that _wasn't_ including the damn owners of the place – looked at her expectantly, waiting for her mask to come down. Since Raiku's tragically fast metabolism demanded she eat her own body weight in food regularly, sitting here with a bowl of ramen and no way to eat it was a nightmare.

She frowned slightly. In fact, she thought she may have had a nightmare like that once.

'It's weird,' Naruto announced, and her, Sakura and Kakashi turned to look at him. Sasuke, true to form, ignored him. He shrugged as they looked at him, pointing and moving his finger between Raiku and Kakashi. 'It's like looking into the _future_.'

'You think I'm a boy?!' Raiku asked in horror.

Sakura shot the mortified Naruto a vile glare. This was not how she envisioned getting to know the famously shy and mysterious Gairano. Not what she envisioned at all, and it had to be Naruto's fault. Naruto went red. 'No! Not that part,' he said hastily, raising his hands defensively. 'It's just the hair, and the masks! You're pretty much the same! But,' he added with obviously feigned nonchalance. 'You could just… take the masks off.'

Raiku slowly turned around to look awkwardly up at Kakashi, whose mildly amused gaze was fixed on her. 'If I'd known,' Raiku said awkwardly, cringing and too frightened to break his gaze, 'this was a ploy to get my mask off me and to compare me to your team leader… I would have refused to come, Sakura-chan.'

Sakura took a moment to look away from Naruto, flushing in realisation and embarrassment. 'No! No, that wasn't my plan at all!'

'It seems like it was,' Raiku said faintly, moving her head slightly. To her supreme horror, his eyes stayed on her.

'Raiku-chan, I'm sorry for my _idiot_ of a teammate,' Sakura said, gaze essentially stabbing Naruto, pinning him in woeful place. 'I meant it when I said I wanted to get to know you better,' she added sincerely.

'Come to think of it, I'm pretty boring,' Raiku said cagily, shifting on her seat. 'Maybe I should go, before you find out first hand and hate me?'

She got the distinct impression that the leader of Team Kakashi was laughing at her and quietly swore revenge as Sakura grinned. 'Sure,' she said lightly. 'Boring, right? So why don't you tell me how you managed to follow Ino-pig's team for a whole day without getting caught?'

'By acting like a spider,' she answered evasively.

Sakura raised an eyebrow.

'You sorta look like one,' Naruto agreed, earning him a swift kick that sent him flying off his stool.

Raiku's eyes widened. Sakura was even more violent than Kankuro, and that was saying something. Next she'd be asking to play "mercy".

'She does _not_,' Sakura hissed, looming over Naruto threateningly. Raiku looked down at herself critically.

'I think I sort of do,' she admitted to the surprise of everyone present. 'But it's better than being called toaster.'

'"Toaster"?' Sasuke echoed mockingly.

She narrowed her eyes, gripping her melancholic chopsticks. 'Toaster.'

'You're a total freak, Raiku-chan,' Naruto said and stood, grinning at her. 'Total freak!' Sakura's hands clenched into ominous fists again.

'Probably,' Raiku said amiably, creasing her eyes at him. Sakura seemed torn between the instinctive urge to defend her guest and Raiku's obvious dismissal of offence- she settled on stamping on Naruto's foot.

As Naruto yelped in pain, Raiku took the opportunity to eat her ramen, scarfing down the now unpleasantly lukewarm concoction and yanking her mask back up. A movement in her peripheral make her turn to look at Kakashi adjusting his where it lay over his nose, bowl as empty as hers. He creased his eyes at her, receiving an almost identical one in return.

They were actually eerily similar, she reflected with no small amount of depression.

The daughter of the owner leaned forward towards her across the divider, beckoning conspiratorially with a friendly light shining in her eyes. Raiku blinked and leaned forward curiously, tilting her head to hear what the woman was going to say better.

'Don't worry about what they say about you,' the woman winked. Raiku frowned in confusion, before understanding dawned. Of course she would have been watching, would have seen her face and drawn her own conclusions. The woman leaned back and took her bowl with her, passing it to her father cheerfully and continuing on as if she hadn't said anything. The question then remained: what did they say about her? Or her face, more specifically.

Naruto whined in protest as he caught sight of the empty places in front of Raiku and Kakashi, sagging in disappointment. 'We missed it!' he complained to Sakura, who went bright red.

'Shut up, idiot!' she hissed, cuffing him over the back of the head. 'You're going to make her self-conscious!'

'I already am, and have resolved to never go anywhere with you guys ever again,' Raiku announced. Deep into an intense argument over something she decided she didn't want to know about, neither of them heard her. She sighed wearily, rubbing her temples to try and alleviate her growing headache. 'It's cool, I'm not even here. Please continue with your conversation.'

When they did, she sighed yet again. 'In fact,' she added, 'I may just go and request a restraining order! Right after I go and saw hi to Gaara, who apparently would like to kill me, having tried and failed already.'

She waited expectantly for a response, deflating when there was none.

'All this,' she fabricated, resorting to making various gestures to emphasis her point as she continued to talk to herself, 'this would be shortly after I go and profess my undying love for the perhaps overly loquacious Hyuuga Neji, whose struggles with fate I can empathise with. We will have eight children.'

This earned a snort from Sasuke, but no other audible reply.

Each of her comments half true, she was rapidly running out of things to say. Actually, she considered, this was helping to get things off her chest. She should confront Gaara and it was hard to avoid mentioning the attempt on her life in public, and Neji's struggles with fate were something she could feel for, though his were far, far less successful.

Clearly she didn't actually bear any sort of undying love for him. Or Gaara, while she was on the subject.

'Leaving,' she added to the bickering too, sliding off her stool. 'Thanks for the ramen and unfavourable comparisons? Thanks and I am leaving.'

She took a few wary steps back and found it safe to continue, immediately turning and beating a hasty retreat. When her meagre senses couldn't pick up Naruto's aura any more she sagged in relief, releasing a tension she wasn't aware she had been enduring.

It was the first time Raiku had agreed on anything with her family for a while. She was screwed.

* * *

A/N: Ah, Raiku. You can't have any children, much less eight. Thanks for reading, make sure to review.

Reviews:

envysXsin: Daisukenojo can't make Chuunin, but Ryuu's on his way to the Third Exam now. x3 And it could be worse than being compared to Raiku! I could compare you to... Give me a second... I'm sure I'll think of something... Well, I can't think of anything, but I'm sure there's someone. Yamada's wife, maybe?

He-hem, continuing in my response- I'd love to write more about Raiku and the end is still quite a way a way, so I'm not sure if the way it ends will give me leeway. I was thinking of doing a series of drabble/oneshots set within the story from both Raiku and other character's perspectives, but it's only an idea at the current.

As for making enemies- Gairanos can't afford to make enemies, because people _remember_ enemies (they also remember Raiku, but that's probably not her fault). Thanks for reviewing.

XxXTwilight-SinXxX: Not as yet, no, since I can't meet a deadline to save my life. Thank you for reviewing.

Impatiens Psittacina: I hope you enjoyed the alternate chapter. Thoughts? The Gairano family is, without question, expendable. That's a deliberate move, hence 'deliberately expendable'. And as for poison... I'll leave you with that one.


	25. Lonerfreaks

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Ah, sorry for the delay. I was debating whether to go directly to the Third Exam, ended up writing/losing that chapter, etcetera... Thank you to Vanya Starwind- you are indeed the beta queen.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

The next time she came into contact with any the others involved in the Chuunin Exam Preliminaries, it was roughly a week later and raining. It was also despite her best efforts.

She stared up at the dark, mottled sky, and frowned. Not that anyone could tell, given the mask, but _she_ knew and that was what counted. It wasn't enough that having decided to avoid Team Kakashi, Team Kakashi was suddenly everywhere, no. It wasn't enough that suddenly _every genin and some Chuunin_ were making bets about her face and her father was pissed beyond all reason, no. Now the Genematrix had decided that the resident electrokinetic of Konoha should come out of the closet. It had to be that. There was no other explanation.

The first sign had been the day of her unfortunate 'Team Kakashi and Ramen' incident- Raiku was largely as unimaginative as her father- and had been when she'd ducked into an alley to avoid their attempts to find her. She'd pressed to the cool bricks to try and minimise her visibility as the three Genin had walked quickly down the street, their pink-haired member calling her name. With a sharp groan and snap, Raiku had found herself both drenched by the broken pipe above and glowing. Ordinarily inconvenient, she was now freezing and in serious danger of being discovered. With a frustrated (and moist) cry, she'd darted up the walls and away as quickly as she could, until she found herself tapping pathetically at Ryuu's highly displeased window in a desperate request for assistance. After all, she couldn't wander around glowing.

Ryuu was, understandably, less than enthused at her appearance.

The second sign was even less subtle. A sprinkler gone haywire, as she'd clung to the underside of a store overhang some perilous three feet above the unsuspecting Team Kurenai, who she was also trying to avoid. The store's flower display had gone from being mildly refreshed to drowning in a matter of seconds, and there was now a large, Raiku shaped blackened part of the overhang.

Ryuu was by then, somewhat annoyed at her continuous visits.

The third sign (and without a doubt, the most obvious) was this one.

It was raining.

She shook her fist at the sky, taking care not to extend her hand beyond the shelter of the windowsill she was momentarily contorted to fit under, some scant feet above the streets of Konoha on the external wall of a building unfortunate enough to be near her when the downpour started. She lurched threateningly and slammed her hand back to brace herself against the wood again, currently bent double with fingers straining to hold her in place. The shelter was enough to make her stay unmoving as the Plot scurried up the wall around her ankles, tugging at her lightly.

This wasn't fun. She had horrible, horrible pain building in her twisted lower back and her fingers felt at dangerous risk of snapping under the pressure of her entire body weight. This couldn't be worse.

This could _not_ be worse.

And as thunder rumbled and the clouds lit up in brief flicker, she could only conclude that she'd asked for that one. She groaned quietly to herself, closing her eyes and trying to pretend she was somewhere- anywhere- else. At home?

Her lips twitched downwards slightly.

In Sand?

The flickering expression turned to a distinct sign of displeasure as she concluded there was actually nowhere she actually enjoyed being that she had herself gone to, except perhaps Ryuu and Daisukenojo's houses. Daisukenojo's was a close second to Ryuu's despite the constant noise: she loved the combined warmth of some eight loud, unpretentious people and the furniture worn from years of relentless affectionate battle, the smell of cooking that had pervaded the walls themselves and the faint medicinal smell of his smiling mother. If it weren't for the unending _envy_, she would never leave.

But Ryuu's house was something else entirely. Years of exposure to the blooming, beautiful sadist had had a curious effect on the air- left to itself, any and all air in Ryuu's proximity would change according to his preferences in a way oddly reminiscent to another elemental relationship she was stubbornly refusing to acknowledge. As a result, the air inside his home was of perfect temperature, and saturated with perfect serenity. Because wherever Ryuu went, he made damn sure he was comfortable. Whenever she so much as neared his house even her own scarcely exposed skin could detect the change, and suddenly she didn't mind. It was still.

And stillness was something that, prior to Ryuu's house, Raiku had never experienced.

She tried to summon some of that stillness to her aid now, where she was pressed against the wall, _trapped against the wall_, waiting out a storm she had more of an innate right to enjoy than anyone. Her fingers shook slightly under the pressure, loudly bemoaning her inability to summon chakra to her aid, and her blood wept in an uncharacteristically melodramatic way as the lightning struggled with the clouds above.

Raiku took a deep breath that failed to calm her but _did_ manage to make her focus, opening her eyes. She had to move. If the lightning started and it would start, given that lightning as a possibility became an inevitability wherever she was concerned, the wall wouldn't help her. She'd seen lightning bend around corners and try to open windows in its attempts to get to her, so pressed to a wall in the open was a problem. But…

_But it's_** _raining_**, a voice in her head whined in a way dangerously close to petulant. _And it's **cold**._

She shook her head, reminding herself that she was a Konoha kunoichi, and she could do this. And not only that, she frowned to herself, but she didn't feel the cold very well, because she had somewhat of a heater installed inside her skin. Wondering what on earth she was playing at and resolving to have a long, stern conversation with herself once this was all over, Raiku gingerly slid a cramped foot out of her small area and flattened the sole of it against the wall, trying laboriously to fix chakra to the bottom of her shoe. When her foot stuck in a precarious way that made Daisukenojo's wondrous chakra seem even more enviable, she promptly moved her hands up to the window sill and grasped tightly, sliding her foot off the small ledge that was now supporting her and letting her weight hang suspended between her arms and affixed foot.

Now that she was in an even more awkward position than before, Raiku slowly drew chakra to her shoe and pressed her foot flat to the wall. That accomplished, she turned her body slowly so that her nose was facing the wall and her Achilles tendons were showing off at the angle they were bent at.

This was it. Moment of truth. She gingerly lifted a finger of each hand off the windowsill, slowly preparing to let her own chakra take her weight. After she started to shift backwards, she reluctantly lifted two more fingers.

'This is ridiculous.'

And she _knew_ that, thank you very much, she didn't need to demoralise herself any more than she already had.

'Shut up,' she grumbled to herself.

'This _looks_ ridiculous.'

'I refuse to perpetuate the stereotype that dictates all Gairanos talk to themselves,' she said sternly, easing another finger loose. 'As well as that, I'm pretty poor conversation so you, me, can just shut up right now, before the lightning finds me.'

'…You have easily the poorest senses of any shinobi. Pathetic. I am, however, surprised that you appear to know words that are more than monosyllabic.'

Raiku's eyebrows shot up and she almost collapsed against the wall in surprise and indignation. What the hell was that?! Rarely did she undermine her intelligence over her abilities as a kunoichi.

When there was no answer forthcoming, she found her cramped limbs tensing in something other than mere physical discomfort.

Something tapped the top of the remaining finger of her left hand briefly.

'I'm not looking,' she said stubbornly, glaring at the bricks like they were somehow responsible for her slip in character and the rain, growing ever heavier and beginning to drip down the walls, lining the air with moisture. 'I'm not looking, because I just _know_ I'm not going to like what I see.'

The tap turned to a firm grasp on either side of her finger, and to her supreme horror, her finger was slowly and threateningly lifted a few millimetres from the windowsill.

She unwillingly raised her gaze to a few inches above eye level, high enough to take in the stunned and horrified spider clinging, much like she was, to the underside of the windowsill.

Her finger began to hurt as it was lifted higher, at what was now an incredibly awkward angle.

She dragged her eyes further up, briefly resting on a creamy shirt, a masculine neck and then a wonderfully defined jaw line, before they finally rested on a pair of utterly blank ones.

She stared. 'I suppose it's out of the question for you to let me go and pretend that this never happened.'

'Yes, it is,' Neji confirmed.

She nodded to herself. 'I suppose you want an explanation for why I'm under your windowsill.'

'Yes, I do,' Neji said evenly.

Raiku bit her lip. 'Can it wait until after the rain's stopped?'

'No it can't,' Neji said, twisting her finger slightly. She twitched at the pain, whimpering.

'I didn't think so.' She looked down at her feet and slid one up, pushing her to eye level with the somewhat bemused and significantly annoyed Hyuuga. 'So,' she began awkwardly with a completely characteristic lack of discretion. 'Can I… have my finger back?'

Without changing his expression at all or looking away from her face, Neji twisted her finger further around. She gasped at the sudden surge of pain, eyes watering slightly. 'Okay! Okay, explanations!' she winced, arm twisting awkwardly to try and alleviate the pain. 'It's raining! It's raining and this was the nearest wall! Sorry, I'm sorry!'

'Why did you need to find a wall?' Neji asked. As a Plot convenient reminder, the sound of the rain began to filter in to Raiku's panic hazed mind, the steady drumming of water hitting roofs and cement bringing up something rather significant. The smell of wet earth and that unique scent that followed rain everywhere served to make her calming breath useless, sending another surge of urgency to her brain.

'I… didn't want to mess up my hair?' she offered. She cringed at the words even as they left her mouth. Her hair was like some sort of aggravated porcupine at the best of times. Coming from Neji himself it may have been different, but from her it was only even more ridiculous than the position she was in.

Neji's lip curled slightly. She paled, recognising a sign of trouble. His grip tightened and she was forced to contort as he twisted again, spine and arm bent at an unnatural angle to minimise pain. 'Why are you here, Gairano? Don't lie this time.'

She craned her neck to eyeball the darkening, faintly rumbling clouds. 'I'm serious about the rain thing! I swear I am! I can't get wet!' she exclaimed, pressing herself closer to the windowsill- also Neji, but she was fixedly pretending he wasn't there- to try and escape the rain, by now more sleet than mere water.

'Why?' he asked flatly.

'Family rule!' She broke off into a yelp as she found her finger twisted and her body unable to contort to compensate any further, already impossibly placed. 'Family rule, I swear! I wish I could tell you, finger breaker, but I can't!'

And that was the point at which she literally, could not say more. He could snap that finger off her hand, and she simply wouldn't speak. It wasn't enough to threaten a Gairano when it came to the rules- their cowardice immediately replaced with penultimate pigheadedness in the face of Equalisers and worse-

Notice.

Notice worthy of mid-sentence capitalisation, even.

The thought was enough to make her shudder and the angle of her hand unnatural enough for him to interpret it as pain, watching her with narrowed eyes.

'Given the level of humidity,' she whimpered, shifting her head back to add a few centimetres to the scant distance between them, afraid of electrocuting as well as inadvertently insulting the shinobi prodigy, 'you might want to pull back a bit.'

His eyebrow moved slightly, narrowed eyes narrowed further.

'Please?' she attempted desperately.

Neji, as always, felt the need to be contrary in the face of challenge. He leaned forward slightly in a distinctly defiant way, enough for her to feel the heat coming off his skin and enough for him to be inwardly shocked at the warmth of the air around her. A low keening sound was pulled unwillingly from her throat at the realisation that struck her- he thought she was alarmed because he was close, but not for the reasons she actually was. This wasn't an issue she'd anticipated facing, ever, given her precarious physical situation.

She tried to think of some sort of an excuse, leaning back as far as she could without breaching the wall of water. Well, this was as bad as things reasonably could be. It would only be worse if Uzumaki found some sort of way of interfering.

As a matter of fact, what were the odds of Neji finding her? Out of all the windows in Konoha, what were the odds, especially given that she avoided all Hyuuga and clan members at all costs?

Her eyes gave no indication of the frown deepening under her mask as she considered this point. Was she in fact free of the Plot? Or was she steadily succumbing to its influence? Her eyes widened as something tugged on her ankle. That sneaky little bastard! That little- oh, it knew. It _knew_ where she was the moment it had shown up. It had probably done something completely unnecessary to _bring_ him here. The idea of intentionally luring a Hyuuga anywhere, especially this one, was repugnant to her Gairano senses of evasion. She grimaced.

'As hard as it is for a Gairano, try to stay focused,' Neji said with chilly irritation, unable to _not_ notice that he was losing her fleeting attention.

She opened her mouth to defend her family's honour and promptly realised that as it had none doing so would be superfluous. She closed her mouth again and settled for nodding with strained good will. A muscle in her eye twitched. 'Any other questions, Hyuuga-san?' In light of the circumstances, a higher level of formality was called for. No doubt it looked like she was stalking him, which was something so incredibly suicidal just thinking of it made her want to weep with fear, so the re-establishing of levels of acquaintance was necessary.

For a moment Neji glared at her, perfectly still in Raiku's current moving world comprised of a windowsill and endless rain, still holding her beleaguered digit between his own, infinitely more elegant fingers. He monitored her impossible heart rate, took in the strangely irregular flow of her breath before he spoke again.

'You're afraid of me.' There was a shadow of a possibility of a theoretical upwards movement at the corner of his lips, one that she recognised from Ryuu. She couldn't place the phantom expression, but recognising it was something Ryuu did meant _absolutely nothing good_.

'I'm afraid of everything,' she said evasively. 'Especially rain!'

Thunder boomed.

'And lightning,' she added hastily, expression changing into one Neji couldn't easily place, at least with that damn mask on.

His eyes shifted back into glare mode, and Raiku cringed, wondering what she'd done wrong. 'Lightning!' she repeated in an attempt to remind him. 'Lightning is bad!'

'You're hardly at risk.' His words were measured and clipped in his annoyance, annoyance she couldn't easily trace.

'I think you'd be surprised!' she said in tones bordering on hysteria, eyes shining with fear in the dim grey light the cloud allowed to reach them. 'Please let me go!'

She hated begging. Hated it even more when all she wanted to do was rip through the sky in power that shrieked, absorbing what she didn't overpower and receiving endlessness that sang in her veins and soothed the familiar ache of repression and what wasn't quite isolation. She hated begging for the purpose of avoiding what she so rarely had the opportunity to experience, because she always did so.

And then she made her biggest mistake (today, or at least within the past second or two).

She sighed. In longing and resignation, but the mistake was in the act of sighing itself.

Neji's grip tightened. 'Am I _boring_ you, Gairano?' he asked tersely.

'No! No, you're quite entert- _interesting_,' she corrected, flinching at the instantaneous spark of ire. 'You're very _interesting_.'

'Perhaps you'd prefer to be elsewhere?' he continued with all the good cheer of a venomous snake. With a powerful shove and the immediate failure of the chakra on her feet, Raiku's relative safety disintegrated. She slammed into the wall of water and through, instantly saturated and freezing cold. The water drenched her clothes and skin, something viciously appreciative howling out through every pore to make itself known before she could even register she was flying backwards, long before she shifted to land heavily on her feet in the water puddling on the street. The rain pounded into her slim shoulders and the exposed skin of her scalp and neck, water shimmering over her glowing skin and clothes in a way no refraction of light could excuse.

She paused to regain her bearings as the freezing water poured in rivulets down her face and by extension mask, hair plastered to her head and forehead. She looked up as through the euphoria, recollection struck. And it was because she was near the Hyuuga Compound, and it was because she couldn't think and because everything was harder now that she couldn't move as, framed by the window frame like some statue, Hyuuga Neji stared at her and as she stared back. Dread settled like lead in her stomach while she crouched in the street in the rain and while he stood in the warmth and dry of his home, confirming what he'd suspected.

'Lightning techniques,' he echoed with that curious, permanent bitterness. It was enough to make her remember who she was and _who he was_ and enough to make her throw herself through the window so quickly the lightning missed her and split the street behind her with a thunderous crack, hands outstretched as he shifted to counter- too slow- and grasped him by his thankfully clad shoulders, sending mild jolts through his system as he slammed back onto the tatami mats that covered the floor, pinned with desperation he was beginning to associate with the thin girl.

'Please,' she pleaded with him urgently, hands fisting in his shirt even as he moved to throw her from him, voice cracking as she fought the urge to just give in to the inevitability of discovery. 'Please don't tell anyone what I am!'

He looked up at her with pale, angry eyes and said nothing. This expression of aggravation was enough to taint her hysteria with the beginnings of hopelessness, a feeling she tried to suppress as best she could.

'Please,' she repeated, water dripping from her clothes onto him and bead of moisture falling from her hair to his with biting jerks of pain as it landed on his skin. Her hands shook slightly, she compensated by tightening her grip. 'Please don't,' she whispered, hanging her head and closing her eyes. It would have been a gesture of appropriate request had she not been almost-sitting on him and he hadn't been seriously considering just murdering her, secrets and answers aside.

'Get off me!' he growled, managing to twitch instead of jerk each time something electrified hit his skin. He couldn't risk touching her any more than her hands on his shirt, lest he find out first-hand the power of the "lightning techniques", and her proximity was only serving to worsen the situation. On Raiku's part, the contact and the almost-contact was making every muscle tense in preparation for flight and her grip on his shirt tenuous at best from nervousness. She wasn't used to being close to people. She wasn't even this close to someone when she fought them, generally preferring to force them as far away as possible for this very reason.

'I really want to,' she said, hands releasing his shirt slightly. 'But please just promise me that you won't!' she pleaded, moisture that Neji suspected wasn't from the sky wavering in her opened eyes. 'You don't know what'll happen to me if you tell anyone! I'm not supposed to be like this!'

'Like what- like the demon Uzumaki?' he demanded as the face above his flinched. 'What are you?'

'I'm human … I _am_!' she insisted. 'I'm human…' she muttered, trailing off. She was. No Plot would make her anything more or less. She was simply human and … extra parts. Or maybe even missing something that stopped humans from being what she was.

She closed her eyes in silent prayer. 'Please don't tell anyone what's wrong with me,' she said quietly, as thunder made the glass in the windows shake. 'No one's allowed to know. My family won't allow it.'

'Are you honestly threatening me, Gairano?' Neji asked in a low, deadly voice.

She sighed heavily, gloved hands at some point simply resting heavily on his shoulders. 'No. My family doesn't want me to be this way. I'm not meant to be like this and they'll be angry with me if they find out you've found out. I'm not … I'm not meant to be like this,' she said again, exhaling heavily. It was hard to get her point across- the significant silences, the meaningful looks and the knowledge, constant knowledge that _you are what you are and that is okay as long as you keep it to yourself_.

For someone as verbally inelegant as Raiku, this was understandably difficult. 'I don't want people to think of me like this.' Like a glowing freak who couldn't stop, like someone even further from them than her complete incapacity for human touch made her. 'I'm not _allowed_ to be this,' she said, more forcefully, throwing the words far from her as though it would make the thought itself leave. She knew her father loved her when he was her father, but when he was the head of Gairano he couldn't like what she was. He loved that she was different, when he was her father, but no one else did. In fact, they were the only ones that didn't mind her being what she was.

But neither of them didn't mind it all the time. The constant, now broken creed of the Gairano family declared they couldn't stand out and they couldn't be noticed, but everything about her demanded attention that she herself didn't desire.

'If you tell anyone, I'll die. And if,' she pressed on as Neji visibly tensed at the ultimatum, 'I don't, then I'll always be even more of a loner… freak than I am now. I can't go against my family, no one else would want me.'

By god it was true and it stung. Ryuu and Daisukenojo accepted what she was, but to her it seemed as though they accepted it on the grounds that she wasn't that all the time. And she was.

'They'd kill you.'

It was more to himself than her. She wondered if he'd take this opportunity to get rid of her for good.

'Will I forget we had this conversation, Gairano? Is that what your _family_ does?' he asked icily. His superiority was impressive, given that a girl who weighed, at an absolute maximum, fifty kilos was currently incapacitating him.

'My family doesn't do that. My family just enjoys that.'

She hesitated to call it what she just _knew_ would make things infinitely worse, failed to find another word and settled. 'It's fate. Destiny. Lack of destiny, maybe. You,' she conceded awkwardly as lightning flashed. 'Will probably forget me. Everybody … will probably forget me.'

'Even if they knew what sort of thing you were?'

The word "thing" made her flinch. If he cared, he didn't show it. 'Even then,' she confirmed wearily. 'It's what you get when you don't have a destiny. Doomed to be of little consequence. It's not bad, really.'

_Slip 2. 3? It didn't matter._

'You accept meaning nothing.' And he was angry with her, enraged maybe. Something she'd said had set him off, yet again.

'Well… I don't mean anything,' she muttered. 'Except to my family. And if you tell, I won't even mean that much.'

'Stop that. Turn it off,' he snapped when he found himself _yet again_ being distracted by being mildly shocked by her dripping clothing. The tatami mats were drenched beyond repair. She was turning out to be an expensive revelation.

'I can't.'

This caused the most minute of pauses.

'You can't,' he repeated flatly.

'I can't,' she nodded.

'… At all.'

'At all.'

He was definitely sick of it, and this new bit of information didn't help. She was shoved unceremoniously off him and onto the mats, drawing her legs up to herself protectively as he rose into a semi-graceful sitting position.

'Relax, idiot,' he muttered, when it became clear she was about to panic and/or start an electrical fire from nerves. 'There's no benefit to spreading this information.'

'That's not true,' she said blandly. Dishonesty would earn her no favours here. He seemed mildly approving of that acknowledgement.

'No,' he confirmed. 'But I'm not going to tell anyone. On,' he added as she brightened with hope that almost wounded him. 'Several conditions.'

'Yes?' she asked, tilting her head quizzically.

Neji exhaled lightly, shaking his head.

Despite being in a bad situation – the worst situation, let's not beat around the bush here- Raiku found herself feeling… Oddly optimistic.

* * *

Reviews:

XxXTwilight-SinXxX: I believe she had good intentions when she asked to see her, but Naruto tempted her. Much like he did Sasuke with Kakashi's mask. Thanks for reviewing.

Impatiens Psittacina: Yeah, I thought her chickening out was far more believable. And as for drawing out her loss- her utter terror of the sickly examiner would make her avoid any and all pain. Even when she lost, it was self-inflicted. Ryuu and Daisukenojo won't be seen much until the Third Exam, but that's iminent anyway and they deserve a break. Except Ryuu. He gets stuck helping Raiku out whenever the world conspires against her. Again- it always ends up inconveniencing him the most. Laughing's good, let's stick with that? Thanks for the review!

fan of this story (love the name): I'm glad you see her that way, but because you're the first person to call it a clan, I'm now free to do something dramatic to them! Ah, unwritten rules, beautiful. Thanks for reviewing.

Stray-Dog: I'm terribly sorry. I'm barely bilingual, but thanks for the review? I find it difficult to comprehend that someone reading a story in english would review in another language, but to each their own, right? Thanks for reviewing.


	26. Necessary Unecessarily Complex Clothes

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Thanks Vanya, your beta skills are wondrous.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

'I want answers,' Neji said matter-of-factly.

Raiku paused. 'What _kind_ of answers, because I can't answer some sorts of que-,'

'Answers,' he said flatly.

'Right,' she nodded, cringing. 'Right.'

'You'll tell me what I want to know. If you lie to me, our agreement is void.'

Another pause. 'Define "lie-"'

'Anything less than the perfect truth,' Neji supplied with a distinct lack of agreeable compromise. She sagged in disappointment, thin shoulders slumping.

'And dry yourself off,' he ordered in afterthought. 'There's no point in you ruining the floor.'

'Can't,' she said glumly, by now fully bound to the 'no lying' clause.

Neji took a deep, calming breath. 'Why?'

She shrugged. 'Just can't.'

He gave a faint snort of derision, moving on. 'When did you acquire this ability, and where?'

'Prior to my birth and … I'm sure you get the message. It's more of a condition than an ability, by the way.'

'Is it why you can move as quickly as you do?' he continued, ignoring her definition.

'Yes.' She hesitated. '…_Probably_,' she added.

'Any other effects?' he asked.

She gave him an odd look. 'Yes. Electricity, all the time?' she answered slowly and vaguely patronisingly, as though talking to a particularly dim child. Neji didn't appreciate this.

'Aside from the obvious,' Neji gritted out.

She eyeballed him warily as she rattled off a list. 'Lightning really loves me, I can't swim or use chakra properly. Gaara hates me-' she broke off, lowering her voice to mutter under her breath. 'At least I _think_ that's a side-effect… And you hate me too, but I think that's because I called you a girl,' she said in addition.

Neji's eyes sparked with hostility.

'You're… You'd be a lovely girl,' she said awkwardly, rubbing the back of her head. 'You're… you're very…' beautiful '…pretty.'

'Continuing,' he said with a strained tone, a muscle working in his jaw. She recognised the signs of someone contemplating horrible murder. Ryuu gave off all of those signs, all of the time. 'You said you can't turn it off.'

She looked at him expectantly. He wore a similar, but infinitely more restrained and hostile look. He at last grasped the odd way Raiku's mind functioned and elaborated. 'Is it true and what happens as a result?'

'It's true. Well, I can turn almost all of it off, but it's always… on. Sort of.' She waggled gloved fingers at his unimpressed face, stretching a thin arm across the dim room to a few inches from his head. Sparks flickered on the skin in the holes above her palm, corresponding eerily to the far more potent ones trying to get inside. 'I don't… have a problem with my face or anything… the masks and gloves and all the rest are to stop me from hurting people,' she explained. She creased her eyes to indicate a smile, and hated how she felt his eyes go through her. 'It's not as bad as people think… it just gets kind of hot sometimes.'

He watched her for a while, before snorting lightly. 'Is this why Hinata goes red at the mention of your name? The electricity?'

She stared at him uncomprehendingly.

'We did hear about the incident on the street,' he said, smirking at her sudden discomfort. 'Did you touch her?'

'Almost,' she admitted abashedly. She wrung her hands, trying to think of an appropriate explanation. 'It's … weird. But I didn't quite touch her.'

'Explain.'

'You're very impatient,' she observed with a frown. 'And it's hard to explain. For me. I'm not…' floundering, again, always struggling… 'I'm not good with words.' She reached up and tugged a glove off, flexing pale, long fingers and stretched them out towards him. Unwillingly, he leaned back.

'What are you doing?' he asked suspiciously.

'Just… gimme your hand,' she instructed exasperatedly. 'It's not gonna hurt. It just feels weird, apparently.'

He stretched out a hand cautiously, leaving it open with the palm facing upwards in the air between them. She flexed her fingers again to hide her nerves, hoping she hadn't inadvertently lied. 'Okay,' she said, hand hesitantly coming to hover a few inches above his steady one. 'Just… watch.' She let her hand drop the smallest of degrees down, a thin tendril of blue power dancing from her skin to his. His hand jerked reflexively, the stiffening of his jaw indicating his own annoyance at one of them. He put it out again stubbornly. She gave a pained smile, fingertips hovering above his. He didn't jerk but he did twitch slightly, which she was wise enough to pass off as bioelectrical stimulation as the thin strands of power tied her fingers to his.

'So … I didn't quite touch her,' she said sheepishly, looking up at his face again. Her fingers jerked back and into a loose fist to sever the connection as she took in his expression, slightly flushed and his jaw tense. 'Are… you alright?' she asked slowly.

Neji nodded stiffly.

She looked uncertain. 'Can I… go?'

He gave another nod.

She surged to her feet with embarrassing relief and vanished out the window with a flash of white blue light, leaving the room dark with only the repetitive drumming of the rain to break the silence. He slowly curled his hand into a fist, letting it fall to his side as thunder shook the walls.

Needless to say, Ryuu adamantly refused to help her this time, given that she was dripping wet, sparking and somewhere along the way, she'd lost her glove and left shoe. But Raiku was never, truly, alone, not until she was what she was and apologised for it, so Ryuu just talked to her through the glass until the rain stopped and her skin stopped glowing, easily ignoring his exaggerated disappointment at the sudden semi-normality of her appearance. And when she couldn't put it off anymore, she went home and he let her, knowing full well that fated hated her enough to make her come back.

* * *

There wasn't enough instant miso in the world to make her tell her father about Neji. Regardless of whether Neji did in fact break his promise or not, she should have done so anyway. Should do so- there was still time, after all.

But standing in the doorway as the light drizzle changed and began to hammer onto the tiles of the roof and lightning cracked the nearest window, she just couldn't. It was bad enough she'd been tricked by a Plot, this would just make everything that much worse. She'd been found out, because ever since she'd become a goddamn ninja everything had gotten harder, and ever since she'd become a goddamn ninja she'd started losing track of the lies she told her friends, the lies she told her family and the ones she told herself out of habit.

Raiku wanted to run away, not for the first time.

But as aforementioned goddamn ninja, she slipped her remaining shoe off, loosened the kunai pouch bandaged to her leg and padded down the hallway, pulling down her mask and sliding her gloves into her pockets. The steel door she passed was black with plot, shimmering with odd colours like light playing on oil, giving her snatches of voices, laughter and screams as her father tried to fix and find what she'd changed, tried to read the Plot she didn't particularly want to be a part of.

She wondered if Sakura would mind Naruto so much if she knew what beauty they'd be capable of. She absently pulled her bare hands up and ran her fingers over her face, closing her eyes as she stepped up the stairs on light feet in memorised route, trying to picture what she couldn't see. Would it be so horrible, touching someone else? For that matter, was it that great?

Her skin was smooth under her fingertips and crackled faintly from even this small amount of friction, light gathering on pale eyelashes and along her hairline. Skin wasn't so important, surely. Surely it wasn't something so vital to a human relationship.

Surely not.

She slid the shoji door across and closed it behind her, tugging off her forehead protector in the relative safety of her room. She had a futon next to the wall more window than barrier that overlooked in half a ridge of the mountain and otherwise the forest, various electrical devices scattered along the floor that she'd broken or been asked to fix. The moonlight cast the room in earthen shades of blue and brown, the darkness of the shadows almost indistinguishable from the more comforting tones. She nudged aside an old radio that hadn't survived her ungloved attempt to change the station and sank onto the edge of her futon, exhaling heavily and drawing a leg up to remove the wrappings from her shins, tugging at the similar ones around her left palm and forearms with her teeth.

Rule four of shinobi: unnecessarily complicated clothes- necessary. She obeyed the rules of being a shinobi as long as they didn't conflict with those of being a Gairano, as best she could. She yanked a senbon out of her sleeve and balanced it on her finger thoughtfully.

She was a shinobi.

She had a tendency to forget in light of her own cowardice and incompetence, but the fact was that she had achieved the first stage of her ultimate goal. The last being a nondescript death, but that wasn't so much a goal as an expectation. She knew how to throw this to hurt, where to puncture with it to kill and how to (poorly) pick a lock with it.

She smiled to herself, running a hand through dripping hair, slicking it back from her face. She'd accomplished something. Gairano Raiku had done something, and she'd only run away for most of it. She drummed her fingers on her knee, considering this point.

It didn't often occur to Raiku that she was only thirteen, nor did she often consider the gaps between her life and that of the average thirteen year old. In fact… it didn't often occur to her that there were any. But earlier, when she'd literally had her hands on one of, arguably, the most attractive boys in her age bracket, she mused that she should have felt _something_.

That would have been normal… yes?

But of course, it was just a body, and everyone had one. It wasn't relevant to her, and never would be, because the only one that would ever be of her concern was hers.

She tilted her head, face set in that mask of casual apathy it always assumed when there was no one there who needed to read it. She should have been more … something.

She shrugged, setting to free the other shin from the wrappings. It couldn't be that important.

* * *

A/N: What's that? This chapter is too short? Stop saying that. It's necessary for this one.

Reviews:

Preface to response? 

I apologise sincerely to the people who I haven't responded to. The only reason I know about your reviews (given that this website didn't inform me) was through luck.

I'm so incredibly sorry.

He-hem, reviews!

Blinkin: Hello, I missed you! And you cannot be a bad person for enjoying it in light of the fact that I sit at my computer, sipping various soft drinks and laughing maniacally.

Yes. _Maniacally_.

I want you to think about that adverb.

I fully support your preface to your vote, and rest assured, character evolution will not be sacrificed for pairing. I'll definitely take your suggestions into account, thanks very much for reviewing.

lilmeika: Thanks for deciding to review, given that I sort of get twitchy when my review rate drops (too obvious?). I'm glad you approve of the characterisation of the stoic ones- I'm never fully sure. Your vote has been taken into consideration, thanks again for reviewing!

Dureth: I'm updating as quick as I can! I used to update every day, but as Raiku (and therefore the writing) is forced to mature, maintaining that pace would make my fingers bleed! I see your point about Neji, thanks for giving me input.

The Gairano family has been caught on so many inconvenient occasions for talking to themselves. They just don't get why people don't have the manners to ignore it. Raiku's facial expressions generally pale in comparison to how I'm forced to picture them (to me she sort of looks perpetually scandalised/awkward), but I'm glad you enjoy them.

As for characterisation- luck? I'm going to go with _luck_, as well as gratuitous research. I rarely feel the need for cliffhangers, but I made an exception this time. Thanks for your support and the review! (My beta definitely deserves praise- very efficient. She sends her thanks).

mebmarcus: Thank you for trusting my judgement (that makes one of us, and Raiku's especially reluctant to do so) and for reviewing. I hope I don't disappoint you.

Yukimi-Shichi: Ah, that's the first vote for Daisukenojo! As for his height... I'm a merciful author, I'm sort of torn here. Thanks for reviewing!

PersonaJXT: I'll try to define my noncanon chhracters more- thank you for letting me know. You were free to suggest 'other', but that makes two votes for Naruto. I can hear the petrified screaming now... Thanks for reviewing!

Freefantasy101: Thanks for the input, I can appreciate your point. Raiku's bad at befriending people anyway, but it's important to me to make relationships evolve. Thanks for reviewing!

hard-bitten confinement: Raiku's meant to stay inconspicuous (keyword being 'meant') because in order to remain free of the Genematrix, the Gairano family has to stay outside of it. As for why she's still here... her father's many things, but he's occasionally sentimental. That and she's almost impossible to kill, it's just ridiculous. She's like a ... cockroach, or something. One more for Neji? Got it. Thanks for reviewing.

XxXTwilight-SinXxX: She truly, truly does. I just... I myself am amazed at how bad her luck is. The family's good, but not _that_ good- they don't know yet.

Yet.

Thanks for reviewing!

Areai Moonlight: Well.... That was to the point. Gaara, got it, and thanks for reviewing!


	27. Familial Love and Responsibility

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: ... Given the heartwarming level of feedback I got on the on before last chapter and the amount I got on the _last_ one, I'm beginning to wonder-

If I update _slower_, do you review more?

Huh.

Thanks Vanya Starwind, brilliant as always as a beta.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

On the morning of the Third Exam, Ryuu met Yamada at dawn and showed him how to make a storm. Daisukenojo fought his way free of a concerned medic of a mother and multiple devilish siblings to get good seats for him and his teammate. Mura left the compound before the light of dawn had struck the hidden village and Raiku followed and lost her.

It took dawn and four hours for her to find Mura again. Eyes bloodshot with the strain of keeping her mind within the parameters of her own skull, she rubbed her face wearily. She couldn't find her. She'd dropped down to street level, even, to try and ask around but…

No Mura.

But she knew where she was. She visibly seethed as from the stadium, explosions and cheers echoed faintly, knowing that was where she should be. Hell, it was where _Shiranui_ should be, given he was an Elite Jounin. She shuddered at the thought that they could be 'otherwise occupied', recalling several flattering but ultimately disturbing rumours.

If Mura had endangered her life for _this_… She flexed fingers that stuck to each other uncomfortably, dried blood from her earlier mishap staining them patchy brown. She'd see whether full contact would kill or just cause arrhythmia. The attempt to find Mura through the only equivalent of chakra tracking she'd ever be able to use had been disastrous, the physical pull of electricity ripping her from her post on top of the building she had last seen Mura from and dragging her along iron shingles, ungloved hands clinging desperately to the conductor as she tried to calm herself. She hadn't had time to put on gloves and could only be thankful that she'd wrapped her hands the night before, a result of the nigh-perpetual insomnia she'd developed.

Mura was her responsibility, which Mura knew perfectly well. Mura's escape would jeopardise both their lives, and Raiku didn't bother to restrain the vicious backlash of heat surging up through her throat at the thought. Mura would kill them both. The Equalisers would come from behind because they always killed from behind and Raiku's existence would be completely erased. She couldn't let Mura be seen with Shiranui. Mura had used up her one chance, which was one more than they usually got. Raiku was _responsible_. She didn't want to think of the inherent flaws in having a thirteen year old responsible for a twenty-something year old.

'Gairano… Raiku.'

On second thought, she may find out a lot sooner. 'That's me,' she said slowly, frame remaining carefully relaxed, hands hanging with deceptive calm in front of her. Don't move. They may be there to give a message, there's no reason to do anything.

An odd and measured breath, as though they were breathing through the mouth instead of the nose. 'Where … is Gairano… Mura?'

The restrictive masks gave a deliberately recognisable, disjointed manner of speech. Raiku flinched. 'She's elsewhere,' she said evenly, eyes fixed ahead with focus many would find unusual for her. 'I am, of course, no longer responsible for her after the completion of my last mission.'

It didn't work like that, how could it work like that? She could run, but that wouldn't achieve anything. She could fight, but it was well known (in some circles) what Equalisers were like. One soldier, one mission. She could survive…

If she killed them first.

Raiku frowned to herself, thoughts flicking ahead in the scant time the Equaliser was taking to respond. Only the Equaliser on the mission was aware of the mission. That and her father, but he couldn't and wouldn't act once she'd proven she'd be willing to kill to live.

Wait, what was she thinking? This was ridiculous- she couldn't fight an Equaliser. They'd destroy her. She sighed wearily as the rasp of the Equaliser's breath drew closer. 'You are … still assigned… to Gairano Mura.'

She blinked in feigned surprise. 'I'm sorry, I wasn't quite-'

She ran, breaking off mid sentence to flicker through the distance like a series of motion captures, pushing off from the flat roof of a department store so hard the concrete cracked and blackened as she fled, already accelerated heart kicking into overdrive and form exploding into painfully conspicuous illumination.

_IwanttoliveIwanttoliveIwantto-_ she shrieked in a combination of fear and pain as the tile she landed on turned black and cracked under her foot, sinking to send shards of hard-fired clay into her ankle and cutting through both wrappings and shoe. Ripping herself free with a stab of pain she lunged for the fire escape to try and get down into the virtually empty streets.

People. She needed people! For the first time in her entire life, Raiku sought the crowds. She changed direction mid-step and threw herself off the building in the direction of the stadium, plummeting downwards and landing lightly on her good foot, the other leaving a solid print of blood as she set off at a dead run. The Equaliser sped after her silently on the rooftops, flickering in what could, to the untrained eye, have been a match for her speed. But only techniques could grant speed unnatural, and their chakra would have to run out eventually.

She couldn't think, she didn't have time to _think_- she had to attack. She couldn't just run, even though it was looking really goddamn tempting, because when they'd recovered they'd come after her. Her head snapped up to check on the progress of her pursuer and she _had_ to admire the speed of their technique because teleportation was _hard_-

The stadium was in sight and she could have sobbed with relief. They wouldn't hurt her in front of a crowd and it would give her time to plan and maybe even escape… The fire in her ankle was eclipsed by a more immediate problem. The concrete cracked and surged up to meet her, almost in slow motion from her speed. But it was enough to make her jump and land in something that gave more than concrete should have, her continued momentum almost slamming her into the ground as her feet stuck. She forced herself upright and tried to drag a foot free from sidewalk turned quicksand, only succeeding in driving the other downwards as it was forced to take her weight.

She cursed explosively, rubbing her hands together as a dark shadow flickered overhead. 'I will _kill you Mura_!' she snarled with viciousness that she was beginning to realise may be native to her, power exploding to life over her clothes and skin before a dark form slammed into her side. The Equaliser gave a brief cry and tore free, their hold on the technique vanishing. Raiku's palms hit the solidifying ground and let her tear herself out of the ground, shoes gone and wrappings hanging in shreds from bleeding legs. She grimaced, dashing over the cement and up the side of a brick building, leaving a trail of black after her glowing, bleeding feet and struggling to keep her breathing even despite the cracking of her ribs. She grasped the edge of the roof and swung herself up and over, catching sight of the Equaliser in her peripheral, flickering into places she had just vacated as she ran and tried to ignore the idea that the technique had been developed for this very purpose.

It wasn't far.

It wasn't far and if she wanted to live as badly as she thought she did she would make it. _No one was as fast as she was. _In answer to the challenge the Equaliser presented power ripped through her limbs and nerves, taking her from that blur to untraceable velocity and setting the world in relative slow motion enough for her to see it really was teleportation they were using, and that they were trying something else, leaving her with enough time to realise that her lungs were burning- how did she never notice?- and that if she didn't take time to breathe soon she would never have the chance again.

_If it was Ryuu he would have caught me by now_, she thought with no small amount of petty vindictiveness as the stadium loomed and she came to a crashing halt in the darkness of the entrance, surrounded by the comfortable roar of the masses before and above and concealed. She took a deep, shuddering breath, hands shaking from the adrenaline and mind quaking with relief that she hadn't yet been seen.

Her relief was, as always, short lived. The sunlight and more importantly, the entrance, vanished into a sea of darkness exploding upwards from the ground and left her in a dark box, even her panicked answering light swallowed by the shadow.

Contrary to popular belief, a life or death struggle in close quarters is not elegant. It is profoundly ugly. How could putting two or more people told to kill or die in a small space be anything less?

And she was in the dark.

Hands gripped her throat as she scrabbled blindly for purchase in the masked face above her and forced sharp fingers into the depressions where the eyes should have been, broken ribs violently protesting as the Equaliser screamed and her back crashed into the hidden floor, pinned there by the far superior weight of her would-be murderer. She gasped for air and smacked her free hand into the side of their head, fist glowing vibrantly and packing enough of a supernatural force to finally let the other nails puncture the featureless mask and rip a scream from the hidden throat. She surged upwards and rolled them, a hand digging wide fingertips into either side of her thin neck and the others wrapped around her ribcage. She let out a strangled gasp of pain as another rib gave with a sharp snap and sent a vicious jolt through desperately seeking fingers and the bared skin of shins pressed to her struggling enemy. Their back arched upwards and she made out a depression of a mouth opened in silent scream as the fingers convulsed on her covered skin.

She fisted her hand and brought it back to let it fly into the opponent's face and sinking into something that snapped and flooded the latex with the sickening warmth and smell of fresh blood. Her hand was grasped and yanked downwards until it smacked into pavement, leaving her to howl in pain and jerk her elbow into their throat as she was dragged downwards, pulling another strangled gasp of pain. And there, the kunai as the Equaliser's free hand sent it up between her ribs or where her ribs should have been, had she not thrown herself to the side. Her wrist gave in a way no wrist should when the Equaliser refused to let go of the hand they had captured and tried to drag her back, throwing their kunai wielding arm towards her and narrowly missing her elbow with the blade. Raiku's hand twisted and pulled free, leaving her with the knowledge of her mistake-

Never lose track of your enemy.

She scrambled to her feet and stood panting, fishing a kunai out of her previously neglected weapons pouch and holding it loosely in a battered hand, the other tucked protectively against her side as her eyes scanned the darkness blindly in an attempt to find the Equaliser.

She was irked to find she'd expected more finesse.

She was fast, yes- you'd have to be blind, deaf and stupid not to know that Raiku was simply the fastest. But she was weak and couldn't use techniques and she'd been under the impression she'd been put at a rather significant disadvantage- _there_. There was the flash of her own light reflected off a kunai as the Equaliser attacked from her left, swift and sure strikes with the small blade easily parried and countered by her own slim weapon, at last playing a game that speed could win her. She feinted to the left and brought it back up to where the Equaliser's neck should have been and found instead the soft flesh of the arm, giving the kunai a savage yank down the length of the limb and spinning in closer to the body to stab and pull upwards.

What should have been a killing, disembowelling blow left only a shallow slice in the flesh of their abdomen, thwarted by the swift movement of her opponent. But her fingers ceased to hold the handle of the kunai, letting it clatter harmlessly to the floor as she twisted and placed a bare hand solidly on the chest of the Equaliser, touching someone's skin through the ripped fabric of their shirt, touching someone's skin for the first time in her life.

If this touch was what she was missing and what made all relationships real in ways hers weren't, she never wanted to be anything more than alone.

They lit up like some grotesque beacon and _shrieked_ like nothing she'd ever heard, voice hoarse and raised to levels no one should have been able to achieve, voice full of agony and horror as under her hand, the flesh blackened and peeled, blood spilling from exposed veins and muscles cramping spasmodically as nerves received all the wrong messages and inside, the organs burning and splitting under force the body simply wasn't built to handle.

Her hand remained weighted on their chest even as the Equaliser fell backwards and their grip, locked in the desperate hold of the dying, dragged her down with them. Their back arched off the floor, bones broke under the power of the muscles attached and the _screaming_ just never stopped. Until suddenly it did and sparks crackled along into a body that simply jerked horribly with residual power, motivated by no conscious will of movement. The darkness sank back into the natural shadows of the entrance and left her with a blackened corpse, broken ribs, bruised neck, a ruined wrist and legs with broken pieces of clay still lodged into weeping, glowing flesh.

Raiku panted with hand still braced against her defeated enemy to keep her from collapsing, limbs shaking with lingering terror, adrenaline and in many cases, pain. She dragged herself into a standing position and cradled her injured wrist against her chest, blood from an injury she hadn't noticed dripping from somewhere above her hairline into her eyes. She blinked hard to clear her vision and took hold of one of the Equaliser's legs, dragging him from the stadium.

* * *

Raiku threw herself from the waiting shadows onto the back of Gairano Mura as she left the building she'd been occupied in for the past six hours, landing heavily on her back and pulling an arm up to lock both Mura's head and shoulder in a hold before they landed, injured shins readily accepting the impact into the concrete as Mura fell, effectively pinned.

'Are you happy now!?' Raiku hissed into her ear, voice hoarse from screams and strangulation as Mura gasped for breath, face pressed into the sidewalk. She tightened her grip, drawing a sharp inhalation from the pain.

'What are you talking about?' Mura gasped, breaking off into a groan as Raiku twisted her arm savagely, staining Mura's shirt forever with blood.

'You thought they wouldn't send the Equalisers after both of us?!' Raiku demanded, her injured hand burying itself in Mura's hair, grasping and pulling up sharply to expose her neck. The rage buried in her chest shrieked in vindication: at last, success! 'Is this worth it, A-Motive, knowing that you're going to live free because they came after me first!?'

Her grip tightened through no will of her own as she demanded an answer, hysteria rising in her throat to choke her. 'Is this worth it!?' she repeated, raising her voice slightly.

Mura swallowed awkwardly, neck bent painfully. 'Yes,' she rasped, closing her eyes to steel herself against what she believed Raiku had in store. 'It is.'

Raiku drew a shuddering breath and let Mura's head fall into the sidewalk with a dull thud, pulling her arm free and rising to a standing position. She drew a trembling hand up to her face and hid her eyes in her bleeding palm, shoulders shaking violently. Mura turned and rose with obvious caution, warily extending a hand to pat Raiku on the shoulder.

Raiku's voice lashed out like a whip. 'Don't!'

Mura's hand jerked back, falling back to her side as she watched the thirteen year old. 'You might understand one day,' she said, instead of the words of consolation and assurance that were vying for the opportunity to escape her.

'I hate you,' Raiku forced out, trying to breathe deeply and force herself to return to a state of calm. She found she meant it, found that the anger was trying to rip its way free and was hindered only by the stabbing pain of broken ribs and ripped skin. 'I'll never understand.'

How could she, a creature like Raiku?

And then the explosions started and Konoha screamed, and the problems of a family and the manifestations of its love became inconsequential.

* * *

A/N: Raiku has trouble meeting new people. Sorry, Equaliser.

Review:

envysXsin: See, I was _wondering_ where you'd gotten to. A concussion? Are you alright? I'm unsurprised that you've nominated Daisukenojo and will take that into consideration. Raiku doesn't get sad often, because getting sad leads to angst which is unacceptable. Hence rare sadness, hence lack of suicidal tendencies. Raiku is good in some areas... like murder! She's seriously ahead of the curve when it comes to murder. Thanks for reviewing.


	28. Personal Storms and Broken Bones

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Ah. Chapter 28. Yet more violence.

Thank you Vanya, for once again saving the quality of this chapter.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

Screams broke out through the streets even as unearthly silence fell over the far stadium, making Mura take a wary step back. 'What's going on?'

'Shut up!' Raiku snapped, trying to listen. She wasn't in the mood for any of this bullshit any more. She didn't want to deal with terrified civilians. She didn't want to calm down and she wanted to kill things.

Murder was familiar ground, after all.

The ground shook as, with a colossal sound unlike anything she'd heard, the East gate crumbled under the onslaught of three snakes larger than the entire circumference of the walls themselves, lunging forward to throw massive bulks against buildings not built for the impact, crumbling instantly.

Raiku's eyes widened. Despite herself, she gave a low whistle. 'That's a really big summon.'

Something giddily darted through her veins, heat searching for an outlet as she reached up to absently tug a sleeve off her good arm, the flash of a shuriken taking care of burnt and tattered wrappings, material both dark and pale dropping to the ground. She took more care with the injured arm, taking hold of her wrist and faintly purple hand and taking a deep breath.

Mura paled. 'Oh, don't-'

Raiku gave a sharp jerk and strangled scream, colour fleeing her face as the world spun. She numbly flexed her injured fingers to test the restored movement, fully aware that this was no substitute for a splint or a medic, but knowing it would have to do. She swayed slightly before she caught herself, gritting her teeth and ripping sleeve and wrappings from her arms, rolling her shoulders and slamming a palm into the air in the direction of the Sand-nin that jumped from the building above her to some destination unknown, catching them in flight with power of her colour. She bared her teeth in sudden, perfect understanding of why Ryuu smiled the way he did and leaped, twisting and slamming an elbow into the burnt midriff as the Sand-nin plummeted, leaving a crater and rising dust where they landed.

Mura stepped back and found cold steel pressed into her palm and her cheek patted with the blade of her new kunai, Raiku's hand temporarily wrapped in latex out of consideration.

'Try not to die before I can kill you,' Raiku said with malicious cheer, vanishing in a flicker. As Raiku darted over rooftops in a highly conspicuous and highly electrified blur of white blue light, she wondered with a sort of macabre fascination, just how well the skin of a snake conducted electricity.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a union that fate smiled on. Several Sand-nin, attracted by the colour- _they're as bad as moths_, she thought to herself- and the motion, broke away from their group and pelted in her direction, increasing speed until they became blurs. Her face split into a savage grin, possessed by pain, adrenaline and aggression.

_Do you want to race…?_

A bit too late to calm down, a bit too late to convince her what she was doing was a bad idea, she braced a foot on a chimney and hurtled towards them, trailing electric death in her wake.

Then reality came forward, backhanded her across the face and started talking about what a _bad_ idea this was and why she hadn't done it _before_-

And Raiku learned how to fly.

Of course, at such speeds, a single twitch can rapidly change direction, which- of course- it did when she shrieked in surprise and flung an arm up to protect her suddenly airborne face, sending her to the left in an uncontrolled, panicked spin. Flailing could really, only make this that much worse.

But when had that ever stopped her before? She caught the edge of a building with a flailing limb, sending her careening through the air with a sickening crack, at last managing to latch onto a nearby wall, panting.

Alright. She could admit that was a bad move. It had felt really, really good, but _that was entirely beside the point_. The Sand-nins had caught sight of where she'd been headed and changed direction, bearing in on her with all the inherent mercy of a flock of vultures. She thought mournfully of how this was the point at which she should reveal some awesome shinobi technique, but was left with only what she already was.

Sure, it didn't take chakra and it didn't run out, but- she thrust out her hands, settling bare, bleeding feet on the edges of the building's fuse box, giving one short stamp to dislodge the lid as power almost threw her backwards, dodged narrowly by her new opponents.

She'd killed an Equaliser, so this couldn't be that much harder… right? She dropped into a crouch and fisted her injured hand in the mess of cabling, foreign and somewhat traumatised power surging through her fist, along her arms until it escaped, shrieking outwards through her other outstretched palm, turning herself into the perfect conductor and better allowing her to move. But it wasn't as potent as she was and she found herself feeling somewhat disgruntled as along the circuit, breakers struggled to destroy the path of power, the corresponding manifestation of her annoyance thickening the bolt of energy and slamming squarely into the chest of the closest Sand-nin with a hoarse scream.

She grinned as a blackened corpse dropped from the air, immediately overtaken by the far more inconvenient living teammates and making her glee falter slightly.

Oh, yes- they were coming to kill her. She tore her hand free of the wires, freeing herself from the power grid and jumping up, kicking off a wall to raise her to the level of the roofs and setting off again, careful to maintain only the speed she was accustomed to.

When someone who could be compared, in flight, to a blind pigeon with no sense of direction had become airborne for the first time, it was best not to immediately repeat the experience. And from the seizing, burning agony that her right knee had gained from the experience, that was the wiser move anyway.

It always looked so easy in the movies.

She sped past the two Sand Genin carrying their more belligerent counterpart between them, missing them by a hairsbreadth and almost sending herself into yet another wall as the Uchiha followed them a small way behind, not bothering to try and get out of the way as they had. She growled at him as she passed, limp growing more pronounced and simply jumping from one leg to avoid losing speed in her run to the stadium. Was she running towards her death? _Probably_. It was the proud tradition of the Gairano family after all. A magnetised kunai was sent winging into the distance as it hit her electrical field, making her fiercely glad that they hadn't seen fit to bring the kind that couldn't be affected by it. Then again, this was hardly a normal thing to encounter, so they couldn't be blamed. She, on the other hand… well, that was a different matter. She reached down and pulled out a kunai for each hand, striking the blades against each other as they began to glow-red hot and threatened to burn her palms, spinning to throw them mid-step and turning back around without checking to see if they'd landed.

Raiku needed wire, she needed traps and things hard to see. She reached down to fish out the spool she loyally carried with her, ripping the seal from it and letting the tightly wound metal come slightly apart in her fingers, crackling as it, like her, began to glow. The stadium loomed in the distance and a large, dark rectangular prism of chakra, which she quickly told herself was none of her business and ignored.

Wait, was that the Ho- _none. Of her. Business_.

No, seriously, that was totally the Hoka- _stop that_.

She yelped and used her wire to hook around one of the spokes protruding to the roof and changing her trajectory as through concrete a man was sent screaming, setting her feet on the wall just above the massive hole and allowing herself to drop down, swinging through and rolling to absorb the impact.

She looked up, fingers splayed and crackling, well at the ready.

Sakura stared at her, jaw dropped.

She winced. She needed something to say to drop the tension, to make the (_three Genin and two Jounin, how did she miss these things?_) shinobi staring at her focus.

'…'Sup?' she offered, cursing under her breath her own lack of eloquence.

'Sup? What was _that_?

'Toaster,' Ryuu said, moving towards her and ripping a piece of his sleeve off with hands and teeth, never breaking stride. 'With me.'

She brightened in a way more than figurative and stood, rubbing her hands together and relishing the sound of quiet thunder. 'Alrighty!' Ryuu was there, he was good at excuses! Ryuu always had a plan. She could even see the well-oiled mechanisms of his brain whirring behind his downright malevolent stare.

'Raiku-chan!?' Sakura goggled, taking in her appearance. 'How did you g- what happened to you, what happened to your _legs_?'

'There were Sand-nins, there were family arguments, it's a very long story and I hope sincerely to-' she broke off into a strangled gurgle as Ryuu grasped her hand with the torn fabric, wrapping it around the injured appendage and clasping it tightly when he was certain he wouldn't be injured by electrical backlash.

'Not that wrist,' she whimpered, biting her lip as tears sprung to her eyes. He… ignored her.

He half-turned. 'Kakashi-sempai, we can keep them from being followed,' he said, giving a firm nod.

'What? What's going on?' Naruto asked blearily, finding his arm yanked over Sakura's shoulders.

'I can explain on the way,' she said, jumping out of the hole Raiku had just entered.

Kakashi shook his head slightly. 'They're taken care of. Withdraw to the hospital, we'll need it soon enough.'

Ryuu's pale eyes slid over to her, glinting evilly. She paled. 'Oh no. Oh no, not that. Don't do that,' she pleaded. 'I've broken like, more than four bones, don't-'

'Take a deep breath,' Ryuu instructed with malevolent glee. She shook her head frantically.

'No! Ryuu, _no -_'

He inhaled sharply.

She didn't really have a choice. Ryuu vanished in a blur of wind and his hand dragged her with him into the fresh maelstrom and out of the stadium, sending the world into a breathless blur as they spun. Her power flared reflexively to protect her and set the storm alight with blue, racing in the wind after the nearest approaching Sand-nin. The wind howled in her ears and pressure slammed into her damaged body, compressing her chest and flinging her limbs out at awkward angles, anchored only by Ryuu's agonising grip on her hand. She opened her mouth to scream and found the air physically dragged from her lungs, skin turning ashen as she began to suffocate.

Part of the plan, naturally, and the part of the plan she objected to most strongly. In times of pain, stress and danger, like all defensive mechanisms, she started to lose the voice inside her head that kept a firm control over the other parts of her head that glowed blue.

It flared. She would have appreciated even a _little_ time to recover- there went another rib, the horrific snap and instant pain gave it away- from the events of the past…

As black dots danced in front of her eyes, she managed to try and consider.

The events of the past… thirty minutes, even thirty _seconds_ would have been nice, really, but of course not. That would have been ridiculous.

Her fierce and terrified grip on Ryuu's hand began to slacken as her skin paled under the current, tiny lacerations from various weapons dragged from the pouches of wind-crushed and electrically-burnt Sand and Sound-nin adding insult to injury. They came to an abrupt halt over a roof and she landed heavily on Ryuu, supported by hands suddenly firmly braced on either side of her ribs as she found herself draped over him, gasping for air. His neck was contorted to deprive her skin of the opportunity to kill him, his usually stoic face flushed and breath coming in pants.

'You alright to go again?' he asked, swallowing heavily and trying to focus, lifting her off him enough to make the distance safe.

'No,' she croaked, head lolling about as he unintentionally further compressed already nigh-shattered ribs. 'Never.'

He nodded in satisfaction- she realised her mistake in talking, eyeing the distance between the stadium and their current location with a distinct feeling of nausea.

'We protect the hospital,' he muttered, head turning and tracing the direction of the enemy shinobi. 'You'll need it later.'

He looked back at her, giving her a light shake to bring her back to herself. 'Take a deep breath,' he ordered again, sounding fairly breathless himself. She made a low keening noise, dragging breath unwillingly into abused lungs as they set off again.

At least there was no one following her anymore. After this little stint, she'd probably welcome a murderous ninja or two. Or a hundred, really, it was much better than this- the miniature, personal storm built and they were ripped through the air on the wind of the localised tornado, the sudden drop in temperature mercifully starting to numb her extremities and better conducting what she gave it, thunder cracking in their wake as he took her with him, firmly answering any question of how he'd caught her previously after he'd started to create, blessedly, a path of less resistance. The artificial path allowed her to compensate for what should have been a drop in acceleration and use her own ability to carry her forward, wind and lightning sweeping up the human debris that had seen fit to invade, traveling away from the snake summons towards the besieged hospital (maybe there was a god after all).

When they came to a halt this time it was because even the adoring wind couldn't keep the abandoned weapons from being tossed into their proximity and Ryuu had blood in his eyes that dripped from his hairline, hissing in pain and releasing her hand to try and both stem the flow and clear his vision. 'What do you see!?' he demanded blindly.

Raiku swayed alarmingly, blinking to try and focus her eyes. Her vision wavered. 'I don't… I don't know,' she wheezed, staggering and placing a hand on the roof to try and steady herself. 'I … I don'…' she broke off, words slurring together in incoherency caused from both suffocation and blood loss. Her skin shone, the freedom of her personal physical conductors only enhanced by the iron in her blood, incisions only the size of paper-cuts making up in number for what they lacked in depth. She reached down with shaking fingers and tore a shuriken from the back of her shin, dropping it quickly. 'Nice,' she managed, glow flickering in indecisiveness. Was it meant to surge or stop?

It was only a condition, it wasn't known for its intelligence and it was trying its best.

Ryuu put a hand on the small part shoulder that still was safe to touch, eyelashes and eyes marked out in vibrant red. 'Stay with me,' he panted. 'We can do it.'

'I don't wan' to 'nymore,' she whimpered, shaking her head weakly. 'I don't want to…'

'Suck it up.' He dragged her up into a standing position, closing his eyes briefly. 'You ready?'

She didn't bother to respond, given he'd just take that as confirmation. She just took a deep breath in, registering that the deep breath of right now was a great deal shallower than the deep breath of only a few minutes previous.

He sighed wearily, bringing a hand up to clasp hers again, bruises in the shape of his fingertips pressed into the covered flesh. 'Good girl, toaster.'

The trip was the shortest through necessity, her own feeble desperation adding to what should have been terminal velocity to send them crashing to the ground at the front of the hospital in a blaze of electricity and wind that cut as easily as razors, barely cushioned by air rising to meet them and leaving Raiku with most of the skin of her arm left on the trail she'd been flung along on the cement. She made out the silhouette of Ryuu, no longer safe to touch her because of the conductivity of the blood from shallow cuts and hovering over her, nudging the side of a masked face. 'Toaster,' he panted, managing a small, cooler breeze that washed over her face. 'Toaster, c'mon. We're not done.'

A brilliant eye managed to fix itself on him, looking somewhat dazed. '_You_ do it,' she half-slurred, half-groaned. Her knee had given up on burning and now simply throbbed, much like the rest of her. Except for this stabbing pain near one of her more-broken-than-the-other-broken-ribs rib, which she was a little concerned about. ' 'm _done_.'

Crouching amongst human debris, blackened beyond recognition or sliced into pieces, Ryuu had to admit that she'd done pretty well, or they had both done a good job. But now wasn't the time for rest, and he told her as much. He ripped a piece of burnt fabric from a body he couldn't even tell the gender of anymore and wrapped it around his hands, sliding them under her body to pull her up. 'C'mon,' he grumbled, hoisting her up further and slapping the side of her face slightly. 'C'mon, wake up. You've got to kill some more people.'

'I… _hate_ you,' she managed, glaring at him blearily. The metal of her forehead protector was slightly melted, unfortunate enough to stay connected by what was left of the fabric and forced to deal with what no inanimate object should. A distant, sharp exclamation alerted him to another squad narrowing in on their position, drawing a frustrated growl.

Daisukenojo would have been helpful right about now. Hell, a healer of any kind.

'Raiku!' he snapped, shaking her harder. Her head lolled back and forth as she whined in feeble protest. 'Get up and kill people right now or _so help you_ I'll tell everyone what you are _and_ I'll tell Uzumaki you have a crush on him!'

She opened her eyes, staring at him in horror.

His own gaze was devoid of pity. 'That's right. _Uzumaki_,' he said, relishing the word.

For a moment she simply couldn't respond, paralysed by the sheer horror of the idea, before she slid an arm under her, pushing free of his support and coming to a wavering standing position. A Chuunin medic landed on her other side, slightly in front.

'Where the hell are our reinforcements?' he asked impatiently, settling into a defensive stance.

Ryuu's expression flattened. 'Hi.'

The Chuunin glanced back at him, dark brown eyes narrowed. 'You've got to be kidding me.'

Ryuu's eyebrows shot up, sending him a venomous look as Raiku swayed, possibly drooling slightly under the mask and looking, in general, more like a recovering coma patient than a ninja. 'Just fix her. Do your job and we'll do ours.'

The medic shot a distracted look at the roofs ahead, at the moment devoid of enemies and took a step towards Raiku, instantly intercepted by Ryuu's hand. 'No,' Ryuu said reprovingly. She suddenly knew _just_ how he'd sound when telling his children not to touch the stove. 'You don't touch. You heal, you don't touch. Got it?'

The medic gave him a disbelieving look just as Raiku clapped her hands together and pushed her palms to face outwards, sending a jagged wave of electricity crackling through the air. A Sound-nin gave a choked scream, frozen in place as it coursed through their diminutive frame.

Raiku's eyebrows quirked slightly. 'Didn' know I could d' that,' she mumbled dizzily, looking down at her hands like she'd never seen them before. 'Tha's interestin'.'

'Less gawking more fixing!' Ryuu said, giving the medic a sharp tug in Raiku's direction, hands coming together in a series of seals as another, infinitely larger Sound-nin crested the line of roofs and came down towards them, hands ablaze in a taijutsu-centred technique. The shinobi choked, the fire dying on his arms, suffocated as he was now suffocating, sweat breaking out on Ryuu's forehead. 'Toaster,' he gritted out. 'Third... coming from your left.'

Raiku looked right, hastily looking left as she realised her mistake. She squinted at the four opponents heading her way, all oddly identical. 'S'four,' she pointed out.

Ryuu's hand started to shake as the captured, hovering shinobi tried to pull his hands up to form a seal, Ryuu's other hand coming up to complete the seal and snapping the man's arms back to his sides. 'Clones.'

Raiku groaned, casually dropping her hand and pulling her arm back while her fingers clenched into a fist that hurtled forward towards the foe, stepping forward and throwing her weight into the blow, elbow almost getting the medic in the eye as he hastily twisted to avoid touching her.

The shinobi in the air was turning purple by the time two of the shadow clones of his teammate met an ugly demise, the other two approaching figures jumping to sprint at her along the wall of the hospital, brandishing shuriken that narrowly missed all but her pretty unfortunate and already injured leg.

She stumbled back and drove her palm into the bricks, sweat breaking out on her forehead as she relied less and less on, well, blood to power her and more and more on everything else. The paint turned black and cracked as lightning ripped across it, demolishing the first shadow clone and reaching for what had to be the real shinobi.

The 'real' shinobi exploded similarly into smoke and Raiku dimly heard Ryuu cursed as a wave of water greeted her when she turned to look at him, slamming into her tiny frame and submerging her instantly, glowing briefly and brilliantly as the creator shrieked in agony, planning to attack from above and disrupting what had, unfortunately, not been a technique on Raiku's part. Raiku gasped and fell to her knees as the water came crashing down to the ground around her, drenching the cement and sending a wave of ionised water over the medic's legs. Skin painted a sickly, running pink with streaks of darker red, Raiku fell to hands and knees.

'Am I done?' she asked, voice strangled and pleading. 'Am I done?'

The Sound-nin dropped lifelessly to the ground in front of Ryuu, legs cracking and skull smacking down onto the ground with a crunch. Ryuu nodded, hands shaking and unable to be relaxed from the virtual claws the strain had forced them into. 'Yeah, toaster. Yeah. You're… you're done.'

Raiku obligingly- finally- collapsed into a heap in front of the hospital. Ryuu sagged and sank into a kneeling position, rubbing a hand over his face and smearing blood over the skin around his eyes. Raiku blinked sluggishly, contorted limbs finally relaxing as the power finally got the idea and drew back as much as it was able, blurred vision taking in the sight of a familiar woman in a white coat rushing towards her, another with a stretcher just behind.

She closed her eyes and fell asleep.

* * *

A/N: Raiku's life sort of sucks. But I do it from love, I swear.

Thank you for responding to the poll- you've given me a lot to think about.

Reviews:

vampy (Vanya Starwind): But your poking is what's gotten me this far!

anonymous yay: Ah, I'm glad you asked. Sort of. Now I have to explain, which is less convenient. So I'm sort of glad. Anyway- hair is a very poor conductor. Raiku's hands, while wrapped, are, as you said, not completely safe but not in contact with the most dangerous areas of Mura's body. A hold doesn't require for a hand to be touching skin, sometimes not even clothing, while the hand in Mura's hair would simply reach a sort of electrical dead end and maybe start a fire. Also, half of the effectiveness of the Equalisers is the psychological build up. When not much is known about them they can better inspire fear within the family. One Equaliser per mission is actually less about practicality than it is about legally plausible deniability. There's one thing you should remember, in terms of family members trying to escape because there's only one Equaliser: this is not a shinobi clan, and most family members are actually civilians. Thanks for reviewing!

Impatiens Psittacina: Oi, how about a little trust here? I'm wounded. Raiku's thought patterns coincided with the poll, but there's no immediate pairing, nor is it my focus right now. Raiku has to deal with things in a way that's semi-realistic, and when placed into a situation that she feels she doesn't react to in a normal way, she's going to doubt herself. She's a teenage girl, after all, though she and everyone else tends to forget. Thanks for the review!

Dermonster: Well. That was to the point. And Naruto? You sadist, I like the way you think. Thanks for reviewing (sort of?).

Dureth: Hello, you're becoming somewhat of a constant variable here. I felt that Raiku's anger, which is rare enough, was warranted given that her family had just tried to have her murdered. I was somewhat concerned about the fight scene and cut several details out, (mostly about the Equaliser's incredibly unpleasant death) so thank you for putting my mind at ease.

And _about_ your last review- you're the one that told me to update faster! Generally, since one a day is my average, that's not advice I hear very often. Ask my beta- I was scandalised. However, I won't sacrifice quality for speed, so if an update takes a few days then you'll know what I'm doing.

(Probably nothing, I'm incredibly lazy).

Thanks for reviewing!

envysXsin: I'm glad. I've caused a few concussions in my time, which is why I'm actually between sparring partners, so I'm happy to hear you're alright. Insanity is 'alright', in my view. And I _wanted_ to kill Mura, I wanted to _so badly_. But then a friend of mine gave me some valid points about her and Genma so she's alive. _For now_. That and it didn't work into the story at that time.

Hm. Raiku's not exactly phased by death, given that in order to help her adjust to killing her mother she was raised with:  
Father: Hello. You killed your mother. Would you like toast?  
Raiku: ...  
And as previously stipulated, she's aware all ninja have to kill eventually. I think it's the method of killing and the way the Equaliser died that may have an effect on her. Thanks for reviewing!

Blinkin: Day off? I think not! As seen above... Raiku doesn't get days off. She gets beaten up, suffocated and has limbs broken. She'll be _fine... *cough* _Anyway, don't worry about me changing my update rate. That was an idle, idle threat, given that my beta may actually sacrifice me to heathen gods. Well, she wouldn't, but she's definitely stopped me from procrastinating in the past, and I'll post a chapter only when I think it's done. So rest assured I won't go purposefully slow or fast enough to sacrifice quality. If you feel I'm slipping, let me know.

In regards to the review-chapter ratio: Pfft, I wish! So thank you very much for reviewing, I look forward to hearing from you again.


	29. Ultralit and Good Intentions

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Welcome to the Christmas chapter.

Thank you Vanya, for working through the holiday.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

Raiku did not often dream. But stuck in a comfortable, medicine-scented haze in the warm dark was proving to be an acceptable substitute. When she was aware enough to take in the pictures and sounds her brain provided for subconscious entertainment she found herself in the middle of nowhere. Standing on water, without chakra or sinking, she looked around her, taking in the faintly salty breeze that lightly lifted her hair from her face and the complete absence of land or people in either way. The water simply stretched on without break or disturbance for as far as she could see, under a sky with faint white clouds failing to obscure the gentle sunlight, and as she looked down into the impenetrable blue depths she saw lightning spread and flicker outwards from her feet, oddly whole instead of diffusing. She smiled to herself faintly crouching down and running a bare hand over the wet surface and watching electricity spread from each fingertip and follow the movement, pulling back a wet hand none the worse for wear.

She looked back down with detached curiosity; tilting her head and watching her reflection do the same. And if she tilted enough, and moved her knee, she'd be able to see her own face without self-consciousness or embarrassment, because it was just her, wearing pale, simple clothes and no masks. But when she shifted the water clouded and evaporated and she was gone, back into the simple dark and the lingering smell of antiseptic.

* * *

When she was aware for the first time after the upheaval of Konoha, someone was screaming and lights were flashing, hurting her eyes as it traded from bright to dark too quickly for her to be able to adjust. There was a glow and a frightened rush of light because there were hands everywhere and she wasn't telling it what to do _why wasn't she telling it what to do?_ She didn't really know and she could have sworn she was- wasn't she? It was confusing and tiring but she didn't want to hurt anyone so_ why …_?

She fell asleep before she could find out what was going on.

* * *

The next time she woke up she was far more aware, but in a lot more pain. Her head ached dully, the pain putting pressure on the back of her eyes and radiating outwards down her neck. She grumbled and screwed her eyes further shut, arm moving to rub her temple. Only she wasn't, because there was something on her arm that was stopping her, keeping it firmly anchored to something else. She tried the other and found it similarly inconvenienced. She twitched when a piece of hair blew over onto her forehead- bare forehead, when had that happened?- and tried to send it back from whence it came by tilted her head slightly.

She wrinkled her nose when that failed, brow furrowing in annoyance. She heard a faint sigh and something brushed over her forehead, the familiar texture of fabric sending the hair back to the side.

'Nuisance,' someone muttered. They raised their voice slightly. 'Are you awake?'

Her nose itched, moisture collecting in the corners of her eyes before she sneezed explosively. She groaned slightly as the movement forced sore abdominal muscles to contract and eased herself back onto the bed with exaggerated care.

'I'll take that as a yes.' Alright. Only one person would treat the infirm with such flippancy. Ryuu was here.

She opened her eyes to pure white. Well, mostly pure. Actually, now that she could try and focus her eyes, it was sort of oddly patterned… okay, it was a bandage. Why were there bandages over her eyes?

'Your … _thing_ freaked out when you were healing and the wattage in your eyes shot up. It lit up the room through your eyelids and it kept the other patients awake, so they bandaged you up.'

She hadn't realised she'd been speaking out loud. That was a little embarrassing. She usually prided herself on her self-awareness (when it came to everything but speech). She shifted her captured arm listlessly, silently asking for yet another explanation.

'What, the arm thing?'

She nodded feebly, swallowing.

'When they tried to fix you up, no one from your family had gotten here yet. So they try to patch you up the normal way, skin and everything, you did… what you do, and exploded. You hurt a few people, I think you killed one. Or almost killed, I didn't really pay attention. Medics piss me off, so I was really just happy to hear some good news.'

Raiku made a feeble sound of acknowledgement. Or maybe it was annoyance. She wasn't quite sure at this point.

'Anyway,' Ryuu sighed. 'They thought you might have been doing it on purpose, so they settled on soft cuffing you to the bed. Then, when you barbecued even _more_ people and set off the fire alarms when their clothes burst into flame, they figured out it _wasn't_ you being a bitch, primarily because you were fucking unconscious, the morons-'

Raiku twitched.

She could _feel_ Ryuu rolling his eyes. 'I swear. Deal with it. _Continuing_. So then they covered you up and pretty much wasted all the chakra they had on hand to heal you without having to touch you by stitching you up, etcetera. Then they splinted you when the casts and traction failed because you started a _fire_-'

It seemed a little farfetched that she could cause all this trouble without being awake for it.

'…And here we are. Or here I am, because when the flower boy showed up his mother chewed him out for getting caught in the stadium genjutsu and not being around to protect you. 'Course, even if he had been awake he wouldn't have been much help, since he's not really built for our brand of last-ditch travel.'

Raiku felt a little like saying that she wasn't either, but accepted the implied compliment.

'He should be back soon. Anything else…? Yes. Yamada's in the maternity ward. His kid is the creepiest thing ever. I swear, if I didn't know better, I'd say his mother's genes staged a hostile takeover and eliminated all traces of Yamada DNA.'

She paused, letting that sink in and quietly drawing conclusions. '…I'm pretty beat up, huh,' she croaked painfully, wincing as her dry throat protested loudly.

Ryuu clicked his teeth. 'Yep. How'd you guess?' he asked sarcastically.

'You only talk this much… when someone's hurt.'

She heard him snort. 'Guess so. Oh, and you've got the stupid mask on since someone from your family _eventually_ got here, spouting some bullshit about how they thought you'd died already. Want it off? Or do you want the bandages off your eyes? One or the other.'

'Bandages… please.'

'No way. You're unhealthy for the other patients. They stay on.'

She frowned. 'But you just... What other patients?'

Ryuu paused.

She heard him start to chuckle.

'You'll see. But I could let your arms out, if you want.'

'I want-'

'Wait, no, you'd probably kill us all. Right, right. I forgot about that. You're just a violent killing machine. Ferocious and deadly.'

Now he was just making fun of her.

She frowned, even though with all but her forehead fully hidden he wouldn't have been able to tell. 'Ryuu…' she began wearily, hearing a bit of a whine creep into her voice, flinching as her fingers twitched, starting to wake up and clearly incredibly unhappy about it.

He made a disapproving sound. 'Want more painkillers?'

'…No…'

'Are you sure?'

She considered this point, conceded defeat because really, who was she trying to impress here, and nodded sadly.

She heard the slide of fabric against fabric and a faint click. Something brushed over her forehead. 'See you on the other side, toaster.'

She dimly registered the sound of a door sliding. 'Did you just- stop that! Toaster, you still with me here?... Damn it, Ryuu!'

'People who are in _pain_ want pain_killers_, halfwit. She asked me to!'

'Sure she did, bastard! You just want her to think I didn't show up!'

'Look, you freckled-faced, pint-sized moron, I've got better things to do than-'

Falling asleep to the familiar sound of the bickering of her teammates, Raiku found herself in a large space, with nothing but perfectly still water and an endless sky.

* * *

It was in the very, very early morning or maybe just very, very late at night when she was next woken. For a while she simply lay awake without registering anything had changed, sending pale light into the moonlit room from gradually focusing eyes. She slowly moved an arm and was content with the restored range of movement, twisting her wrists to test the restored bone and sliding a foot up to bend her knee. Quietly satisfied, she turned on her side towards the window, happy to fall asleep again.

'Gairano... Raiku.'

Alright. Equaliser. There would be no falling asleep. If she could throw herself off the bed and yank it up to use as a shield as she did so, that would give her enough time to set off the alarm-

'Don't... worry.'

If an Equaliser could betray emotion, it would have been amusement in this instance.

She blinked, caution evident.

The Equaliser turned towards the window, looking out over the village. 'Your ... exploits ... are eclipsed... by the day. You... live.'

'That's... nice,' she said, a faint wheeze barely audible in her voice. So the nigh-destruction of Konoha gave her a get-out-of-Equaliser-free card? Killing one of their own would be ignored?

A low sound. She couldn't tell what it would have been without the mask. 'And... Your wishes... for the other... A-Motive?'

She tried to think. It was Mura. Mura was not her responsibility anymore- she had no right to determine her fate. And as much as she wanted revenge, it would be stupid to exact it now.

'Not your business,' she said, shifting her pillow and getting comfortable. _Or mine._

The silhouette of the Equaliser showed their nod, standing against the backdrop of Konoha. '...Understood.'

A sliver of yellow light fell upon the wall, the glass pane in the door lit up from behind as the night staff prepared to do their rounds again. When she looked back, the Equaliser was gone.

She paused for a moment, then turned and screamed into her pillow, shoulders shaking as the tension she hadn't realised was building was abruptly released. A low groan alerted her to the presence of another patient in her room and she immediately stopped and with shaking hands, replaced her pillow. With a sort of hysterical amusement, she noticed that there was no heart monitor connected to her, and because it was either laugh or cry, she was laughing as she fell into the dark.

* * *

A/N: The time skip approaches... thank god. The last thing I wanted was to detail Raiku's puberty. The sex talk I'm less eager to miss.

Reviews:

Dermonster: That's the spirit, embrace your inner sadist! Thanks for reviewing.

Dureth: She has nightmares in which she is in a dark room, with the words 'believe it!' echoing around her. Oh, she was afraid. Thanks for reviewing!

Impatiens Psittacina: I _could_ send an Equaliser to her, but then I'd violate previous rules about their missions... Ah well. Thanks for reviewing.

envysXsin: Raiku's cowardice and inner patheticness actually bely her more efficient and naturally vicious actions- picture it. Thanks for reviewing!

Blinkin: Ah, taking the time to give me more hints about Ryuu, _eh!?_ I'm so onto you. Your anticipation is warranted, and that's all I'll say. Thanks for reviewing.

XxXTwilight-SinXxX: Raiku only ever gets the short end of the stick. She wouldn't know what to do with an advantage. Mura's sort of in an odd place... I may redeem or revenge upon her. Thanks for reviewing.


	30. Broken Ribs and Plot Devices

**The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous**

A/N:Bet you thought I'd forgotten (I totally had). No, just busy, (and possibly lying), very busy. Here's a dubious chapter, enjoy.

Thanks vampy. Your patience is endless, your support is a constant encouragement.

I do not own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates.

* * *

'Four of hearts,' Daisukenojo grinned.

'No fair,' Raiku whimpered. 'I can't even hold my cards.'

'You have a spare hand, don't you?'

'Yeah, but you need two to play this game! Who wanted to play Snap anyway!?'

'Sorry,' Sakura apologised sheepishly. Raiku had been dragged painfully into a seated position for this visit, abdomen pain settling into a dull burn and her various lacerations stinging in the air conditioned air. 'I learned how to play on our mission to Mist, and no one's agreed to play me since I got back.'

'So you thought the invalid would be a good choice?' Raiku asked, gingerly putting down a card. She yanked her injured wrist away with a shriek as two more able hands slammed down on the pair, making her bed dip alarmingly.

Sakura smirked, tucking the pile under the cards she already had. Raiku looked down at her two remaining cards with a depressed expression. 'I am not good at this game.'

'Don't worry, Ryuu's beating me too,' Lee called from his side of the room, cheerful despite the superior stack of cards Ryuu was hoarding, younger boy currently shuffling.

'I'm lucky,' Ryuu passed off, despite the fact Raiku knew damn well he could cheat at Beat your Neighbour.

'He can't move his arms!' Raiku protested in Lee's defence. 'Cut him some slack!'

'Well, we could always invite a teammate of his to help him,' Ryuu shot back.

Raiku glared at him. He smirked, clearly aware he'd won. 'That's what I thought.'

She looked down, realised it was her turn and put a card down, exhaling in relief when it wasn't a pair.

'That's me out,' she said, smiling and wincing at the same time. 'Shame.' She began to edge her legs off the bed. 'I... might go and take a walk...'

'You can't walk!' Sakura was scandalised. 'You can barely move!'

Raiku's feet hit the cool linoleum, legs shaking slightly as she wobbled. 'Totally,' Raiku muttered distractedly, more to herself than the rosette. 'Can.' She grabbed the edge of the bed hurriedly as she threatened to topple over, bracing herself.

'You had a broken knee!' Sakura raised an eyebrow. 'How did you break your knee, anyway?'

Raiku had brief visions of hurtling through the air, but quickly shook them off. That was quite impossible. 'Don't really remember- the whole day's a blur.'

'If you see my teammates, can you tell them I'm awake, Raiku-chan?' Lee asked hopefully.

Raiku visibly wilted.

'I don't think that-'

'I'll go with you to find them,' Daisukenojo volunteered immediately, colouring when everyone looked at him askance. Excuse to see Tenten? _Probably_. The red haired boy got to his feet, gripping Raiku by the upper arm. He was a little taller than her now, but far from catching up to Ryuu- at average height for a boy their age, while Raiku remained gawkish and too long for a girl, all limbs and spindly fingers. She found herself propelled forcefully out of her hospital room, yelping as her IV caught on the doorway and yanked her back, resulting in several embarrassing minutes of entrapment, bound up in tubing, as Daisukenojo pulled her free (by ripping her IV out of her hand and almost de-masking her).

'Back later!' Daisukenojo called into the room, slamming the door behind him.

'I don't want to find Lee's team!' Raiku wailed, stumbling as he pulled her behind him down the white hallway, her feet confused and leg still throbbing in pain. She almost fell and saved herself by clinging to Daisukenojo's sleeve, almost ripping his shirt in the process. 'They hate me!'

'_Hyuuga_ hates you,' he corrected.

'That's what I said!'

'How badly can he hate you? You called him a girl _once_.' He snickered at the memory.

Raiku paled, face matching her hair, mask and clothes, now the only source of colour her eyes. But this would be the first time she'd seen him since he'd found out about her, and if she pissed him off he might go back on his word! And she was guaranteed to piss him off! Always did, it was like a Plot of its-

Her eyes widened. 'No way!' she exclaimed in horror. She slammed into Daisukenojo's back as he stopped, and he admirably only staggered a little. Granted, Raiku weighed less than your average ten year old, but she still thought it was a neat trick.

'What the hell?!'

'It was nothing!' she said hurriedly, hands gripping his shirt to stop her from falling over, effectively leaving her to clamber all over him as he struggled to turn around. 'Keep walking!'

'Get the hell off me!' he sputtered, trying to get a solid grip on her to pull her off as she hung precariously off him, trying to keep her balance as well as trying to avoid his skin.

'I can't, stop moving!'

'You're the one that's throwing me off! You're making a scene!'

'Maybe if you stopped struggling-!'

She looked up to see nurses and patients alike stopped in the halls to stare at them, and flushed.

'Walk!' she ordered hurriedly.

'I can't see!'

'Try it anyway!' she said, voice rising into hysterical pitch.

'Aren't you the Gairano in ward three...?' she heard someone ask with growing suspicion.

Daisukenojo about-faced, staggering in the opposite direction. She tried to lower herself down to the floor slowly, eyes almost ripping the walls apart to search for a Plot.

She twisted to check her back, hearing something crack ominously. But the crippling pain was worth seeing the flicker of black as the Plot hurriedly scurried over to somewhere she couldn't see it. Her skin crawled, hair crackling as live current ran through her skin.

'Stop that!' Daisukenojo yelped, mild shocks jolting him every now and again.

She contorted as Daisukenojo made it to the stairs, groping blindly at the walls as her arm wrapped around his face to cover his eyes. 'Get it off me get it off me!'

'That's what I was going to stay!' he growled.

His foot caught on the first step, and as they fell through the air, something occured (occurred) to Raiku. Her life was suicidal.

She screamed as they rolled down the stairs, sharp edges slamming into her ribs and tangled limbs, leaving Daisukenojo behind as he managed to brace himself enough to stop and she continued on, rolling an extra few feet past the foot of the stairs to lie sprawled on the linoleum of the lobby. She blinked woozily, squinting to try and make the ceiling stop moving.

'Toaster!' She heard hurried footsteps. 'Toaster, can you hear me!?'

'Yes?' she offered uncertainly, lifting a hand to her hairline, bringing back the red-stained glove.

Daisukenojo sighed in relief, dropping and letting his hand hover over her head.

'Don't cling to me again, got it?' he asked, warmth flooding Raiku's face and bringing a flush to her cheeks as the injured flesh knitted itself together again.

'Got it,' she sighed contentedly.

'Hatori?' a high female voice asked. '... Gairano? Why am I not surprised to see you here?'

'On the floor?' she inquired.

'Injuring yourself in a place of healing,' Tenten corrected.

Raiku felt the Plot wriggle up along her collarbone to stare her in the face, gloating triumphantly.

'Neji-kun?' Tenten called. 'Can you help me? She's staying in Lee's room anyway!'

She lurched upwards, gripping Daisukenojo. 'That's fine! I'm fine!' She gasped and lost all colour as what felt suspiciously like her previously broken rib acting up again sent a jolt of agony through her system. 'Really,' she forced out in a squeak.

'We were just coming to look for you,' Daisukenojo said to Tenten, forcing nonchalance, studiously avoiding eye Plot grasped her neck and tried to yank her back down to wait for Neji. She struggled valiantly, finally ripping free and into a wobbly standing position. She threw her arms up in triumph, inadvertently almost removing her dislocated shoulder in the process.

Obligingly, her legs gave out again.

She eyed the stairs and started to pull herself along the linoleum, making slow, agonising progress. After she'd pulled herself a few inches, someone gripped each side of her waist and pulled her up abruptly.

'No!' she whimpered. 'I can make it! I _will_ make it!'

Her shoulder was yanked savagely up and back, popping as it jolted back into place. The room spun as Daisukenojo released her arm and Neji threw her over his shoulder.

'I think I'm going to throw up,' she croaked.

Neji's grip tightened.

'Don't you dare.'

'I'll electrocute you!'

'_Try me_.'

The Plot on her back made a sound distinctly reminiscent of smugness.

* * *

A/N: Don't murder me!

Reviews:

Dureth: Sorry. Went back and edited it, hopefully makes more sense. Thanks for reviewing.

Vanya Starwind: No one was more surprised than me. Thanks for reviewing.

Dermonster: I wasn't going to give an explanation, when someone says that you have no choice but to try and fix it. Hope it's clearer now. Thanks for reviewing.

Blinkin: No skip yet, rest assured. I decided she'd suffer enough this way- long term, rather than short term. Thanks for reviewing.

anonymous yay(there has to be some sort of name we can give you): Whether or not I undergo the time skip is dependent on whether or not I feel I can do it well- I won't let you down. Not like I did with chapter 29, which I've hopefully fixed. The time skip is still up for debate, but your faith in me is very, very much appreciated. Thanks for reviewing!

envysXsin: Ringing voice of insanity? I see we've met, somewhere. I would have to change the attire of the clique, though Raiku's doesn't leave much room to alter anything. DAISUKENOJO WAS IN IT. Sorry this chapter was also short... Thanks for reviewing!

RollInCream: Raiku never gets a break. Ever. As for Ryuu not liking Raiku, I'm not sure it would come across if he did, since he likes Daisukenojo fine and spends all his time abusing him... If you take away Ryuu's dialogue and simply look at his actions, I think he'd give you something to think about. RaikuxRyuu? I don't think that would make him be nice to her. In my mind (though it wouldn't work out that way in all likelihood) this is the relationship they'd have:  
Raiku: Hey Ryuu!  
Ryuu: -dropkicks-  
Raiku: -sails into distance-

Thanks for reviewing!


	31. Dislocations and Hospital Floors

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates. No, not I.

* * *

This was both humiliating and inhumane. As if the knowing, somewhat smug look that she just knew would be on Sakura's face – _go ahead and laugh, pinky, you're probably going to end up with Naruto_- wasn't bad enough, Neji's shoulder was not exactly comfortable and her broken ribs were submitting complaints about its suitability as an environment.

Luckily, he then shifted and her stomach took the brunt of the pain- substantial pain, actually, since she'd done god knows what to her spine and internal organs.

She settled for wheezing indignantly at the Plot currently patting her head sympathetically. Murder wasn't an option.

_Yet_.

Daisukenojo was, of course, quite content. He was talking to Tenten- actually talking, mind you, instead of the usually incoherent muttering- and she appeared to be enjoying herself. While casting looks at Raiku out of her peripheral, yes, and sometimes at Neji. Raiku reflected on the injustice of using Daisukenojo to make someone jealous, and resolved to quietly and discreetly do what she could for the redhead.

Not for Tenten though. Tenten was for Neji.

Neji's grip on her leg tightened painfully as the gap between the waistband of her pants and the bottom of her bandages grew slightly bigger with the repetitive movement, his damnably clever ears picking up the low, warning crackle of electricity preparing to thoroughly _encounter_ him.

'Well there's not much I can do about it, is there!' she hissed, trying to keep her voice from reaching Daisukenojo and Tenten's ears. She elbowed him, unwisely. Neji visibly tensed. She could actually even feel him tense through the fabric and pain, which was infinitely more alarming. 'It's not like it's my _hobby_. You knew what you were getting into when you picked me up!'

Against my will, she added sullenly, in what she was relatively sure was the safety of her own mind. The idea of Neji being able to read minds was so incredibly horrifying that she would go missing-nin just to get away.

'But seriously,' she said, after a few moments of terrified reflection. 'I think I'm going to throw up. From fear. Or pain, maybe. But I'm definitely going to-'

Success! She was on the white-tiled ground so quickly she could barely register it had happened at all! And Neji was continuing to move away, down the equally white, sunlit hallway, Daisukenojo and Tenten pausing nearby to look down at her.

'Did you call him a girl again?' her teammate asked, trying valiantly to hide a grin.

She shrugged, as though to imply not only that she didn't know, but that his motives were equally unknown and this situation could be but probably was not her fault.

Wise to her game, Daisukenojo lent her a hand in getting up, chivalrously ignoring her sharp intake of breath and slight wobbling. 'Go ahead,' she wheezed, waving them on. 'I'll catch up.' She braced her hands on her legs, bend over to pretend to catch her breath.

Daisukenojo looked at her.

_I know what you're doing_, the look told her in no uncertain terms. She was taken aback at the sudden, obvious outlining of body language. _But I'm going to let you get away with it because Tenten is so very, very hot._

She boggled as he shrugged and continued on, with nary a second glance from Tenten.

After they'd progressed far enough along the hallway, she walked- slid, really, possibly even oozed- towards the stairwell.

With the eye she was using to keep an eye on them, she saw Neji tense.

She oozed mournfully along after them.

* * *

It was clever- she'd grant it that. One of the more clever ones, she'd agree, grudgingly. Downright dastardly wasn't out of the question, but perhaps a bit over the top and somewhat of an affront to her pride. It was not, however, a particularly humble Plot, and was currently gloating at her from behind Neji's left shoulder. This of course, gave her an excuse not to look directly at him- or would have, she reflected glumly, if anyone else knew what it was or could even see it.

It wasn't her fault she hadn't known it was there- how much time, on average, did most people really spend staring at their backs?

At least she'd hoped it had just been on her back. The alternative didn't bear thinking about. But as long as the Plot was keeping out of reach, she wasn't yet nimble enough to catch it and get its hooks out of her. No- she was a character.

_For now_.

But in the world of reality, Neji was conversing quietly with the nigh-ecstatic Lee, while Daisukenojo attempted awkward conversation with Tenten.

She wondered, from her hospital bed, how long this crush of his was going to go on. It was clear that Tenten was for Neji, just as it was becoming increasingly obvious that Ryuu had no intention of getting a girlfriend and was doomed to have some sort of dramatic Plot all of his own (and that Raiku was probably going to have to change teams).

On that note, she was actually starting to wonder if Ryuu was gay-

Ryuu's head snapped towards her, eyes narrowed into malevolent yellow slits. She jerked back reflexively, and ceased wondering about his sexuality immediately, electing instead to think about deliberately non-phallic clouds. Suspicions apparently eased, Ryuu stopped looking at her and resumed watching Daisukenojo and Tenten with barely concealed amusement.

Raiku shook her head slightly, eyeing him. He was certainly one to watch. And if she'd observed correctly, as she sped past in her usual flight of terror, people were watching him. Well, females. Females were watching him. Apparently unfazed by the fact he was barely a teenager and in all likelihood a sadist, girls were actually… _interested_.

If that wasn't a sad confirmation of the self-destructive nature of man, Raiku didn't know what would be. And as an eluder of narrative, she liked to think she could recognise that sort of tragedy. Given the thought of girl talk made her feel ill, she should try and avoid it at all costs if this were the case: the last thing she wanted to be subjected to was an in depth discussion on Ryuu's… attributes.

She shuddered.

Ryuu's attributes.

That was _one_ conversation no Plot could pull her into… Regardless of whether or not that was true, she felt better for thinking it.

But back to the issue at hand. The Plot waved at her beguilingly, giving her snatches of sound which, coupled with odd contortions, looked highly disturbing, especially when juxtaposed against the statuesque dignity of the Hyuuga. She tried to look at it nonchalantly, found that it was impossible to do out of the corner of her eye, and settled for looking at it with an expression of mild conspicuousness.

Which Sakura couldn't help but notice, of course. Raiku first became aware of _that_ problem when something pointy and painfully indiscreet nudged her in a broken rib. In serious pain and thus seriously contemplating the benefits of suicide, she looked over and down at her new… friend? Was friend the word…? Yes, friend.

Sakura looked gleeful, which was her first clue something was wrong. The second clue was when the pink haired girl leaned in, looking over Raiku's shoulder as she ignored Raiku trying to lean back, desperate to preserve her personal space.

The third and final clue was when Raiku realised, Sakura almost sitting on her and breath fanning across her neck uncomfortably, that the other girl was looking at Neji. It would have been too much to hope Sakura had had a sudden epiphany and was looking at the Plot- it was definitely Neji.

'You're busted,' Sakura half-grinned half-smirked. _That_ was a familiar expression; she must have been spending too much time with the Uchiha.

'Busted?' Raiku hedged, a mantra starting up in her head. _Please don't think what I think you think, please don't think what I think you think…_

'You like him!' Sakura hissed, pushing her in what was probably a playful way but in this instance was excruciating. Raiku sucked in a sharp breath as black spots danced across her vision, head spinning.

'Toaster?' Daisukenojo asked, breaking away from his fledgling conversation briefly. 'You alright?' His freckled face was concerned. Conversation died as Lee looked over in concern, thus ignoring Neji, who in turn looked over as well, thus giving Ryuu nothing to watch in amusement and making him do the same.

'I'm fine,' she wheezed into the silence. 'Just… Just fine.'

'My fault!' Sakura waved them off. 'It's okay.'

After a few minutes of suspicious quiet, they turned back to their respective conversation partners.

'Is this room crowded?' Raiku wondered to Sakura, desperately trying to change the subject. 'I think I should get some-'

'Don't even _try_ changing the subject, it's not gonna work.'

Evidently Ryuu wasn't the only one who could read minds. Raiku sagged back into her pillows, quietly wanting to die. Sakura, apparently taking this as consent, rested her elbow on the edge of the bed, near Raiku, and proceeded to smile up at her devilishly. 'So,' she began in a whisper. 'You like Neji?'

'No,' Raiku said in equally low tones. She tried to literally force the word into Sakura's mind through sheer force of will. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't working. When did it _ever_ work?

'Why are you staring at him?'

Raiku had no reasonable response to this. 'I think he's mad at me… again,' she attempted.

'Why?' Sakura frowned. 'Is this _still_ about the "girl" thing?'

Raiku started, staring at her. 'How does every-' no, she decided abruptly. She didn't want to know. '…No,' she settled for. The idea of her every mistake being known of by her peers was terrifying. 'When we went looking for them, Daisuke and I fell down the stairs, and… he ended up carrying me back here,' she finished in a grumble. There. She wasn't proud, but there it was. 'He gets annoyed with me whenever I do something stupid. Like Ryuu,' she added in dark afterthought.

'So he was… worried about you?'

Raiku shook her head. 'I bled on his shirt.'

Sakura sighed wearily, resting her chin on her palm. 'Sometimes I wonder if normal boys are like this.'

'They're not,' Raiku deadpanned, spindly fingers absently picking at a stray thread in her blanket, worrying at it until it came free. 'Most of my family's civilians, so I can be pretty sure.'

'Yeah.' Sakura rolled her eyes. 'I bet they're not as interesting, though,' she added, brightening slightly.

'Boring's good,' Raiku sighed wistfully.

'Why?' Daisukenojo asked incredulously. To her credit, Raiku didn't shriek. But it was a testament to her complete lack of commendable abilities that she hadn't noticed the sudden lull in conversation.

'It's… easy to live with?' she offered, eyeing him.

'Easy's boring,' Ryuu said. It… seemed really pointed, actually, did he have two meanings? She may never know, she decided.

'Exactly!' she replied happily. 'You get it!' The corners of her electric eyes crinkled.

'Your family's got some messed up values,' Daisukenojo grimaced, the freckles on his face shifting into strange patterns as the muscles under them creased into the expression.

She watched with something like fascination. 'Sure,' she replied eventually, not bothering to raise her voice despite his stance across the double room. 'But… they're my family.'

Neji just looked at her with his blank eyes that for the first time, weren't saying anything, and she wondered at the illness coiling in her gut while she continued. 'Besides,' she added, bright eyes creasing. 'Shinobi are always really dramatic, right?'

Ryuu snorted, lean form leaning back in his chair as he folded his arms. 'Yes,' he said meaningfully, eyeing her. She flushed correspondingly. 'They are.'

She really had to have that conversation with her father soon, she decided with an uneasy, confused smile as Sakura started to berate Ryuu with surprising ease and familiarity, the twin voices rising in volume with their tempers. She couldn't afford to keep getting trapped in these Plots.

Maybe, she considered with a sigh, she should move.

* * *

A/N: So... how's... things? Oh god, there's no point! I'm sorry I was away for so long! But you should've seen that monster, man, it was just... this big! After all, I live where monsters are ... born? Not buying it? Didn't think so...On the bright side, the ugliness me and my family was dealing with is mostly gone, so I can't promise the same rapidity of update that I used to give you, but I will finish this. Eventually.

Review Response:

Blinkin: I want you to know that I am wracked with guilt at how long I left this. Well, I feel awkward with guilt. Emotions are hard. And I know, man, that if anyone could be wise to my game, even as a virtual presence, it would be you. I have faith in you.

Learn Patience: Wow your name is appropriate given myyyyy... I don't even know how long my absence stretched for, so we'll go with 'long departure'. As for Naruto- I actually have to develop his character more as well as a million others, but no, somehow, I think not. Not given Raiku's paralyzing fear of the boy and his need for contact. Humour tends to come and go, I agree. I've got a naturally dry sense of humour, so I have trouble expressing it without people being there to hear my tone... I think I actually got worse at that. But I'll try, yeah?

Kai-Chan94: Why thank you.

Dureth: You're welcome. If it's any consolation or if you guys even care any more, I'm cringing over here with guilt. Feel vindication, friends!

envysXsin: Ah, it's been a while. I have no doubt that your grounded...-ness is over by now, but I'm sorry to have left you guys so long.

srooone: Now, here's the thing: despite yours being a first review from you on this one, the fact that it arrived so long after I last updated gave me a sort of guilt-kick. So thanks, man, you helped me get my ass in gear. SO DID THE OTHERS. DON'T KILL ME.


	32. Burning Out

The Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Whoa boy, are you guys gonna hate me. I don't own Naruto or any of its characters or affiliates, and I am in no way profiting from this representation.

Short chapter, I'm afraid.

* * *

'We're not moving,' her father denied flatly. He stood at the foot of her hospital bed with his arms folded stubbornly across his lean chest, giving her a cold glare.

Raiku looked at him pleadingly, beseeching, and not least because he kept smacking the backs of her hands away from her bandages. Her open injuries had reached the "it itches because it's healing" stage and she had very little impulse control. 'But it's following me!' Her eyes, she reflected, weren't the best for this.

She widened them anyway, sticking out her lower lip, for all the good it'd do under the mask-_the fucking mask-_ she pulled herself up short. Her father frowned in grudging concern as she cringed. 'Something wrong?'

'I can't stay here,' she begged, clasping long, bandaged hands together. 'Please, I can't! I'm starting to not like my mask and getting angsty about it and thinking about boys and nothing's,' she gestured vaguely at herself, 'acting up so I think I'm in danger, dad, and I want to go home!' she ended on a sob for good measure.

He stared at her like she was an emotional time bomb. Rather than the literal one he was used to dealing with. He leaped into action the second her eyes started shining, pretty much clambering over to her side and putting a hand on hers, seating himself gingerly on the edge of the bed. 'Raiku,' he said with equal parts reassurance and borderline hysteria. 'Raiku, honey, don't cry.' He patted her hand uncertainly after a pause.

She sniffed pathetically, pulling her other hand up to carefully try and dispel the moisture. Mostly because it could have disastrous consequences, but also because it was undignified. 'I'm not crying,' she muttered. Gairanos didn't cry.

Neither did shinobi, she reminded herself belatedly.

'Look, Raiku,' he said gently, awkwardly, shifting slightly. 'Everything's going to be alright. We can take care of this,' he stressed, leaning forward slightly. 'There's a large event coming up,' he said, dropping his voice and looking to the door cautiously.

Raiku nodded desperately. That could be handy.

'So we're about to lose… a lot of people,' he hedged.

She nodded again, listening intently.

He winced. 'And in your condition…'

Her blood ran cold, her heart stopped. 'Dad?' she volunteered uncertainly, swallowing hard.

'You'd be temporarily put into a Plot we made for you,' he continued, looking as though he had to force the words out of an unwilling throat. 'You couldn't be a shinobi anymore, but,' he added hastily. 'You'd be able to touch people.'

'What do you want to do to me?' she whispered, trying to distance herself from someone she no longer recognised.

'Please, Raiku, I'm trying to keep you alive!' He dropped his head, swallowed hard before he went on. 'You'd save lives, honey. But you couldn't be a shinobi anymore. You'd be normal,' he added with emphasis. '_Normal_. Just like you always wanted.'

And she did want it. She wanted it so much it made her sick and miserable in the middle of the night and crushed her with envy, but every part of her was saying that she couldn't do it, that she couldn't just take it out of her. That it couldn't be that easy. That leaving her team would hurt her more than it was supposed to and that without trying to be a shinobi she wouldn't want to try to be anything else.

She choked on the thought even as it forced its way free.

That she'd turn into Mura.

Numbly she realised she was shaking her head, that she was leaning away and he was starting to look strangely grave. 'We can't keep you out of the Narrative, Raiku,' he said, looking at her with odd intensity. 'We've been trying. You've been trying. But even since we crushed the Hyuuga-' customary curl of his lip, she wondered with sickened horror if she was the same- 'Plot, we've had Mayuko on Runner duty ever since. It can't be maintained.'

'You're trying to burn me out!' she exclaimed, the protest escaping her self-control. She clamped her own hands over her mouth but kept shaking her head. Rock Lee exhaled heavily in his sleep and twitched slightly- they both froze until his breathing once again evened out.

'It's the only way to control this and the only chance you have to be anything but-'

Raiku visibly flinched and her chest constricted. 'A what?' she whispered hoarsely, eyes starting to cloud with tears. 'Anything but what?' she demanded, louder, throat burning. He hissed at her to keep it down, looking over at the mildly Plot ensnared but still dangerous Character Lee.

It was the broken ribs; it was the broken ribs that were hurting. 'They were going to kill me, weren't they?' Oh god, don't. She couldn't understand why she was hurting so much, why she couldn't breathe and why she wasn't _okay with this_. She always knew she was going to end up like every other Gairano, and from his confused expression, he had too.

But she'd tried so _hard_…

'Raiku-chan?' Lee mumbled from the other side of the room, rubbing his face with a fist that failed to obscure his almost suspicious expression at the state she was in. Her father tensed. 'Are you alright?' She was suddenly so glad he knew who she was and cared enough to try and…

And…

She nodded, watering eyes creased at him in a smile. 'No problems, Lee.'

He didn't like it, but he reluctantly nodded, curiously circular eyes moving between them as he started to turn onto his other side. '…Alright then.'

Raiku looked down at her hands, at the faint blue she'd always thought she'd be. She tugged on a piece of her spitefully unkempt white hair and wondered quietly what she'd look like, wondered if she'd miss what she'd never seen when she looked into a mirror for the first time.

But she'd been stupid, and she'd gotten caught up in what wasn't her Plot to deal with. She'd bonded with people she had no right to be anything but disposable towards and she'd made too many mistakes now.

Her fingers started pulling threads from her blanket nervously.

She'd done too much now.

'It's okay,' she mumbled. 'It's okay, dad.' Because he was trying to save her, in his own way. She realised with a low twist in her stomach how afraid he must be, to even try and suggest something that would hurt her so badly.

How much she'd hurt everyone else before this was done.

She sniffed, blinking back moisture with renewed determination. 'It's okay,' she repeated for the third time, steeling herself. She nodded, trying to compose herself. 'I can do it.'

Her father sagged in relief. Or something that wasn't even close but that she had to believe was what she wanted to see if she was going to do this. 'We'll look after you, Raiku.' He smoothed the bandages over her forehead, pressing a kiss to the safer linen. 'You'll be alright.'

She tried not to flinch away.

'I know,' she smiled bravely, almost a wince.

* * *

A/N: Hey, just a heads-up- killing me means this has no resolution! Aha... ha? _You can trust me I swear_. But you guys had to see this coming. Contrast chapter 1 with chapter 31 Raiku. 31 was the opposite of everything she should've been.

Reviews:

: Don't murder me, man, I can be trusted! I'm glad to be back, but this next part... will be hard. You guys know I'm good for it, right? Sorry again for the lag, and I'm glad you stuck around.

Dureth: I missed you guys too! Try to stick with me, pal.

anonymous yay: Erm, right back at you? Thanks for hanging in there.

Thanks for reviewing.


	33. Good Drugs and Rib Failures

Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Oh... hey, there...

Okay, so we can't pretend the many-year absence didn't happen. Unfortunately for everyone involved, a series of family problems and... horrible things derailed life as me and quite a few others as we knew it. It was terrible, but now that life is finally, _finally_ on the upswing, I actually have the headspace to deal with things. Things like this, which I swear I have NOT ABANDONED. I AM HERE, YOUR RAGE IS JUSTIFIED.

I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, storylines or affiliates.

* * *

'I am almost entirely sure that this is unnecessary.'

'I am almost entirely sure that you should shut your face,' Ryuu replied unsympathetically. Raiku boggled in disbelief. _Boggled_, like _that_ was a verb.

'Shouldn't you be helping me escape? Shouldn't I be your favourite right now!?' she demanded.

Ryuu peered around the entrance to the maternity ward cautiously, not bothering to look at her. 'I don't have favourites.'

'We did a technique together! It hurt many people! You like that, that's-,' Raiku's words failed her for a moment, before she rallied magnificently. 'That's a thing that you like! That I helped you do!' Magnificent failure: that was her trademark. 'So… yeah!'

Ryuu rolled his yellow eyes. 'Seeing our teacher's baby is hardly going to be a chore for you, drama queen.'

Raiku sputtered in indignation at his accusation. 'You take that back!'

"If you two don't stop your wailing, I am going to come out there and discipline you, get me!?"

The two of them paled.

There was a short, somehow angry pause.

"Get in here!"

Ryuu glared at her, like this was _her_ fault somehow, and slunk around the corner. She followed reluctantly.

_Babies._

It suddenly made sense, Daisukenojo's refusal to enter within forty metres of this hospital room.

_Babies everywhere_.

Raiku stood, paralysed by the overwhelmingly multitudinous swarms of babies and pregnant women sitting in rows. Swarms? Were plural babies swarms? Did it depend on the baby, maybe? Did skulks or embarrassments of babies exist? Were babies like Ryuu skulks all on their own-

Ryuu doubled back and dragged her roughly forward, towards Suzuki's hospital bed.

Raiku mustered up an eye-creasing smile. 'Suzuki-san! You're… glowing!'

Suzuki was glowing, yes, but not in the traditionally maternal way. The ominous circles under her dark eyes were even more pronounced, against her glow-in-the-dark paleness. The baby held in her arms glared at Raiku with similar levels of malevolence. A terrifying aura wafted from them both.

Raiku broke into a nervous sweat.

Yamada, who looked far more exhausted than either his wife or newborn-son? Was that a son? Raiku made a note to check, later- gave her a wide, proud smile. 'Isn't she beautiful?'

Raiku cursed internally. She'd messed this up already. 'She is… she looks a lot like you!' she lied.

She could _feel_ Ryuu's gaze slowly sliding over to look at her, no doubt scolding her for her terrible lie. _She was a bad liar and he had known this when he'd brought her here_.

Yamada didn't seem to notice the deception. "I know!" he beamed. "She has my eyes!" On cue, Suzuki offered up the tiny glowering machine, which promptly grabbed onto Yamada's outstretched hand and twisted. Too weak to do any damage but still _possessed of killer instinct at several days old_, Raiku noted hysterically, the baby instead chose to munch toothlessly on Yamada's wrist.

"And her mother's tenacity!" he boomed.

Even Ryuu stared at that one.

Suzuki gave Yamada a meaningful look, full of dark threats. Raiku's cheerful demeanour dimmed under the force of the glare he sent them. "Either of you little bastards want to hold her?" he gritted out.

Raiku and Ryuu immediately began spouting hasty denials.

'No!'

'No thank you!'

'I'm not good with babies.'

'I would, but I'm all… crippled.'

'In fact, she should really go back to the ward,' Ryuu interjected.

Raiku instantly forgave him all his previous sins.

He smirked. 'With all the medics fussing over her, though, she'll be back to training in record time.'

Except that one, the filthy traitor.

Raiku eyeballed him with one glowing orb, trying to keep the other on the baby and only succeeding in giving herself a headache.

'Are… you sure?' Suzuki drew out lingeringly. Her 's' sound was particularly long. Ryuu clapped a hand on Raiku's shoulder, so used to the immediate faint shock that he didn't even flinch.

'It was nice to see you again,' he said formally, steering Raiku out.

'Now I kind of _want_ to hold the baby,' Raiku admitted, looking over her shoulder. The tiny menace was pulling on the scars around Yamada's smiling mouth, while Suzuki overlooked the display with a kind of menacing watchfulness.

'No, no you don't. Because then it would explode, and his wife would make us die with her mind.'

Raiku narrowly dodged a nurse. 'That's why I like you, Ryuu. You have such a poetic way with words.'

He snorted, glancing over his shoulder at her. 'Why are you walking so strangely, anyway?'

She blinked, pointing at herself with two fingers that were splinted together.

'No, the other spiky-haired toaster-face. Yes, you.'

'I'm… not?'

Ryuu glared at her. She hated that look. It meant something bad was going to happen to her limbs. And her bones. Her poor, poor bones. They ached when she remembered their electric hurricane of bonding.

'I'm not!'

'Yeah, you are,' he said stubbornly.

'You did almost shatter my knee, remember!?'

'That happened before I got hold of you, _remember_?' he glowered, tugging her forward and back into her own room. Rock Lee looked up and waved with one hand casually, so used to their antics by now that he just smiled and kept reading… whatever he was reading, Raiku had never been any good at reading upside-down.

'Do not leave this room until I come back with Freckles, got it?' he said firmly, eyeing her from the doorway.

She held up her splinted hands defensively. 'I'm not!'

He glared.

'I'm not!' she repeated, taking a step back.

After a few more minutes of suspicious glaring, he gave Rock Lee a nod of acknowledgement and closed their door harder than was strictly necessary.

There was a short pause.

'Well, man, it's been great!' Raiku began cheerfully, tugging on her sandals from where she'd hidden them under the bed. Rock Lee frowned at her in concern. 'But Gairano-san! You're still injured!'

'Yeah, well!' she beamed, throwing up her hands. 'What can you do? You can leave, that's what you can do, before your teammates harass you into an early grave.' Or notice things they shouldn't, she added mentally, with a scowl her mask hid perfectly. She finished pulling on her shoes, only to stare at her feet for a moment. The inky black Plot moved sluggishly, sending broken, refracted light out from its oily surface. It was clinging to her legs, but she'd been shuddering to feel it on her back since her father had left it with her. Ryuu had noticed because of _course_ Ryuu had noticed. He was the Moderate Hindrance in her very own cautionary tale. The Plot was heavy and it made electricity jump inside her nervously wherever it touched her.

Her chest clenched when even thinking about being normal. She would start glowing erratically and sending sparks along her hair, which she hadn't done since she was a child. It did bad things to her hair dye, made her look like a brindle-back… stick insect.

'…Raiku-san?'

Rock Lee's voice interrupted her sickened reverie. She glanced over her shoulder at him in surprise, ignoring the twinge of pain from her ribs. 'Yeah?'

He was watching her with a gaze surprisingly old. She sometimes forgot, like everybody else, just what Rock Lee's own burdens were; she forgot how hard he'd had to work to get where he was, and how much he'd suffered. 'Rock Lee?' she asked, more quietly, when he failed to respond.

After a few pensive moments, he gave her the same blinding smile he usually put on to face the world. 'Nothing.'

She smiled uncertainly back at him through the window of fabric her face was allowed. 'I'll see you out there soon.'

* * *

When she finally got home, her father greeted her the same way he always did when she arrived wheezing, injured and near unconscious.

'Weren't you in hospital?' he asked absently, standing in front of the cupboard and staring into its contents with a serious expression.

'Oh… not for anything serious,' she avoided, trying to sidle towards the hallway while taking her shoes off at the same time.

'…No,' he drew out thoughtfully. 'No, I'm pretty sure it was, when I came to see you.'

The cupboard door was now obscuring his face and, by extension, making it impossible to see her. 'Nurses,' she brushed off with a high-pitched laugh. 'They love to gossip!'

He made a sound of agreement. She relaxed slightly.

Big mistake.

He slammed the cupboard door shut just as she reached the hall, allowing him to get a clear look at her. 'Raiku!'

She shrieked and made a break for the door, her half-removed sandal flapping with each step.

'Get back here!' he yelled from behind her, footsteps thudding through the kitchen just as she broke out into the warm night air.

'I'm not staying there anymore! They poke me with things and I keep getting grabbed by Brooders!' she screamed, leaving sparks in the air behind her. Each deep inhale she took made her chest ache dully.

Given how excruciating it had been a few days earlier, that was an impressive testament to how drugged she apparently was.

'They really gave me the good stuff,' she wheezed, sending pebbles skidding down the incline.

'Raiku!' her father's voice bellowed from the top of the incline to the compound.

She managed to turn a bruising stumble into an agonising roll on the last few feet. 'I love you very much see you tomorrow I'll be at a friend's house!' she got out in a single, unbroken yell.

Almost ten exhausting minutes later, it occurred to Raiku that she had almost no friends. Naturally, this was a bit of a problem, given that she was dressed like a hospital patient and only wearing one shoe.

She took a deep breath and regretted it immediately. She emitted a long, high-pitched sound of pain. 'Ow,' she managed, putting a hand to her ribcage. Her ribs had had enough. No drugs were worth this kind of torture. They were bound and extremely displeased. Even that pressure made her squeak again, trying to inhale as shallowly as possible. She was simply not built for sustained endurance. It just wasn't in her nature. Her fragile, cowardly nature that was taking a real beating and wasn't that just so _unfair_-

She kicked spitefully at the Plot, oozing its way up her shins, and the self-pity immediately dissipated. Much better. Now, to look at her options.

Ryuu was right out. Daisukenojo? Well, his mother was a medic.

She frowned.

And so just as likely to send her back to hospital. Damnit! Hinata?

She tried to restrain her hysterical laughter, she really did, but even the muffled shaking sent pain rocketing up her spine. When she got light-headed from lack of oxygen, she finally managed to calm herself down.

But seriously now. Sakura? No, she was probably about to lose McBroody, so that wouldn't help anything. Raiku would just get more embroiled and then she might actually end up getting killed to correct the Storyline.

Yamada was at the hospital with his wife (her next choice) and Lee was obviously out of the question. None of Team Nine were her friends; Neji was actually the worst possible choice- short of throwing herself at Naruto and begging to have his babies.

She glared fiercely at the Plot on her leg. It was patting her with a long tendril in what it probably thought was a soothing manner. 'Why can't you do something useful, and get me some help?' she grumbled, hugging her ribs gingerly.

It oozed unhelpfully.

'Of course you can't.'

She slid down against a nearby wall, careful to leave the sight of the street first. It was warm this time of year, even at night, so she could always sleep outside.

And die of infection.

She let her head fall back against the wall in frustration. How was this her life? How was she supposed to get anything right when she had no one to- 'you are being ridiculous!' she snarled, kicking the tenacious Plot off again. It made an unhappy series of vibrations. 'I mean it! Sitting here feeling sorry for myself isn't going to do anything except make me suffer attractively! Which I am physically incapable of doing! Do I _look _like I can pull off a Grade Four Brood?' she demanded, kicking it away as it tried to slither back. 'You are going to have to work with me a _little_ if we're going to get this right!'

It apparently disagreed, dodging her kick and lunging for her yet again, successfully pressing its unpleasant, connotation-laden weight on her pelvis. She gagged, starting to glow around the edges. _Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff_-

No! She needed it!

She tried to rein in the electricity starting to shimmer on her skin in waves, but the panic at the Plot's proximity and her rising hysteria only made her failure to make a difference have greater impact. The small side-street began to light up even more intensely, flickering with an eerie blue. In retaliation, the Plot clung more closely to her skin, seeping inside her clothes. She gasped at the overwhelming cold- was this what it was going to feel like? Was this what it felt like to be normal, cold and alone inside her skin with nothing there, with _just herself and_-

'Toaster!'

Rapidly approaching footsteps pierced through the growing haze in her mind, forcing her to take a shuddering breath. A worried, freckled face peered at her between the dark spots in her oxygen-deprived vision.

'Daisukenojo,' she gasped, trying to stop hyperventilating. Her electric eyes made his colouring appear more blue and purple than its healthy red, but didn't detract from his obvious concern.

'Calm down, you idiot! We've been looking for you all over!'

'I … don't want… to go back,' she forced out between shuddering breaths.

'Fine! Just… stop doing what you're doing!'

She nodded and screwed her eyes shut, trying to center herself. After an agonisingly long time, sitting in silence, the glow began to dim. When it was at a reasonably disguisable level, Daisukenojo put a cautious hand on her shoulder. 'Better?' he asked warily.

She nodded, curling in on herself slightly. 'I've had a bad week.'

He looked visibly relieved. 'No kidding. Come on, you can stay at my house. My mom knows all about it.'

Raiku highly doubted that.

He hovered awkwardly, not sure how to help her up. In the end they settled for a method known as non-interference, where she got up by degrees and with occasional setbacks and he watched in captivated suspense. His careful scrutiny lasted all the way to his street, where he made her stop a few houses away from his.

He hesitated.

_Do not be in love with me_, Raiku prayed silently.

'When you meet my family,' he began slowly. She sagged in relief that was probably uncharitable. 'Don't, uh…' He rubbed a hand through his almost non-existent hair. 'You should…'

Raiku felt this needed hurrying along. 'I … should…'

'They… They can smell fear. You should, uh, remember that.' He finally settled on.

'They can what? They can smell _what_?!'

'Daisuke!' an androgynous, high-pitched voice shrieked. Raiku almost physically staggered from the sheer force of the sound. From his front gate, there was a growing gaggle of tiny red-haired people, seemingly growing by the second.

Daisukenojo went redder than usual. 'Sanno! Naomi! Get back inside!'

His cheerfully painted front door swung open, making a rectangle of light spill onto the lawn and struggling pile of siblings. 'Everyone inside! You too, Daisukenojo!'

Raiku immediately found herself obeying the woman who was, without a doubt, Daisukenojo's mother. There was something in the harmonics of her voice that just compelled obedience. When she was near enough to see, the very tall, very red-haired woman set her hands on her hips. She fixed Raiku with an unimpressed, calculating stare.

After a few moments of this scrutiny, Raiku began to fidget helplessly.

'I suppose it's too much to ask that you haven't torn any stitches,' his mother said eventually.

'Oh, you're in trou-ble,' a child sing-songed. Daisukenojo immediately hushed them.

Raiku fidgeted in awkward agony, unused to this level of attention from an adult female.

'Answer me!'

'I don't know!' Raiku instinctively ducked and covered her head with her arms. Fingers seized her sleeve and pulled her inside.

'Don't be such a wimp.'

'Daisukeno~jo,' Raiku whined in a futile plea for assistance. He pretended not to see her past the horde of red children, all gawking at her.

'If you have time to stare, you've got time to get ready for bed!'

It was magical. The children immediately vanished, as though by teleportation.

Less wondrously, so did Daisukenojo. Raiku blanched.

His mother turned back to look at her in the better light, a gleam in her dark eyes. 'Now, where shall I start?'

Raiku whimpered.

* * *

A/N: So! Yeah! That, uh, happened. It's kind of hard getting back into character, so feel free to tell me where I've eaten your dreams. Writing Raiku trying to escape drama while simultaneously being EATEN by drama is also tricky, so concrit welcome!

And at last. What you've been waiting for after what else you were primarily waiting for: review responses. I know that I have rightfully lost readerships, but if you're still around, HERE IS YOUR HARD-EARNED REWARD.

Reviews:

Dureth: Heeeey. Long time no, uh, read. Yeah, it's quite sad. Like Raiku observed, she can't really do the 'beautifully sad' thing, though, so it never sticks for long. And I updated! Eventually! Please don't stab my interweb.

Kai-Chan94: We all feel bad for Raiku. If we have souls. So I don't, but you are a good person! Yay! Yeah, she got too involved and now she must Suffer. You've read the story, so you know what mid-sentence capitalisation means.

heavens-gaze: I hope you're proud of yourself. I actually almost choked to death on my own laughter when I read your pairing recommendation. You are a horrible, hilarious person for putting that in my head. Also: I AM SO SORRY. For making you read a Naruto fic then basically abandoning you. Sorry!

Parrot Post: Good idea, but Raiku will never stop comparing Neji to a girl. Despite his wonderful jawline. It's envy-based, really, his hair is so much nicer than hers could ever be. Don't join the mob! I had reasons! REASONS I SAY! The story is never on hiatus. I always want to write but... things.

srooone: Well. This is awkward. BUT I DID UPDATE! Again! Uh, sorry.

phobia97: Raiku would love to kick butt, but then she would get PTSD, and then her father would actually eat her. As in, physically devour her, as an example to everyone else.

Skwiziks: BLINKIN. BLINKIN I AM SORRY!I always love your reviews, but your review-pology is now guilting me to death. If you're reading this, you are made of awesome. Thank you for your feedback- I try to write as honestly as possible, but I anticipate pitfalls now that the story is actually being attacked by a Plot in the most awkwardly meta way possible. Your google-fu will hopefully not fail you. I am still writing. For a long time, I just... couldn't.

Buziwuzi: A year is NOTHING. I APPARENTLY HAVE THE PATIENCE OF A PROCRASTI-GOD. Thank you, I try to keep her development smooth. And cowardly.

Guest: WISH APPARENTLY GRANTED! A-ha!

blackcheerynuke: And I friggin' love you guys.

tazdevil: They did. I didn't deserve new reviews, but occasional inbox reminders stabbed my little writer heart. As we all know, writer's hearts are small and twisted, but man. The guilt. I do continue, I just... for a while, just didn't.

myharlequinromance321: Thank you. I am back. Clinging with my talons.

Thank you all for reviewing!


	34. Frolick of Terror

Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Not reeeeally happy with this and will probably be taking it down, I'm just trying to introduce the Plot's EXTREMELY OBVIOUS interference with her life. Forgive the state it's in!

Don't own.

ALSO I HAVE FANART. DahliaFay has generously drawn Raiku on dA, go ahead and check her out! Thank you! I... I feel so awesome.

* * *

The intervening weeks passed with varying levels of success, from the Gairano drama avoidance perspective. The Gairanos' sudden withdrawal from public life was eclipsed by Sasuke's convenient defection and the Sound invasion recovery efforts. As a village, Konoha did not particularly care for them as it was- their family was strange and had a heavy burden of civilians, and they seemed to shuffle along without a clear definition of what being a Gairano even meant. Their sudden recalcitrance was passed off as being a result of family losses during the invasion, which was only partially true.

The reality was that from the inside, family life was rapidly changing. They had lost more people than they had expected during the invasion and they were struggling to mobilise as much of their remaining forces as possible towards the stabilising of Konoha without arousing suspicion. This was in addition to the attention they were already getting for their losses. The handling of the overarching Plot was growing more difficult as it expanded. Her father rarely made it home until the next day, now, and usually was so exhausted that he could do nothing else. They may have been Gairano, but they were also human, and much of their family had died. The fact that they were still a very large family and that they had known about their losses in advance was hardly a comfort when houses stood empty in the squat compound. Grieving wasn't something they could recklessly indulge in, either, as it generated Drama if left unchecked. Unfortunately, so did repressing the matter, which left much of their already strained manpower dedicated to intense grief counselling and gift basket making.

For her part, Raiku was struggling to keep up with what was happening while trying to grapple with the sudden feeling that she wasn't really meant to; everyone had their jobs, and she had hers. Hers was rather simple at the heart of it, though, and where her support would have previously been tolerated, it was now actively suppressed.

She knew, intellectually, that much of what she was feeling was being artificially produced to make her easier to sympathise with, later. For someone as used to being optimistic to the point of causing discomfort in others, though, the weight of such complex emotions was exhausting.

She didn't really blame them, she reflected, staring sullenly out her window during her allotted Brooding time. Brooding was serious business for a shinobi. The average jounin went through dozens of hours a month just to stay intriguing enough to survive a Level Two Plot Twist, though of course, this was largely unintentional. Until her Plot had been seen through to the end, however, Raiku's four hours a week had been upped drastically. She had already been punished for trying to sneak sudoku puzzles into her room, which had been stripped of her tiny broken radios as a result.

She missed them. They made her feel like her room had things in it.

The Plot oozed at her in a disturbingly sympathetic fashion. She eyed it balefully while trying to keep her other eye fixed on the increasingly depressing weather outside and only succeeded into giving herself a headache.

Raiku and the blackened curse had reached a compromise in conjunction with her father. She would do her best to look appropriately distant and brooding, and it wouldn't introduce any further friction until it had to do its wretched thing.

If she squinted very hard and frowned so tightly that her whole jaw ached, she could pull off a slightly constipated Level Two Brood. It was so close to being above mediocre that she'd been generously allowed, after her grafted Plot had been deemed to be attaching nicely, the freedom to go outside during the next autumn storm.

_Yay_, she had muttered, receiving a look of weary exasperation from her father in response.

She hated it.

Things were becoming serious and she was barely a teenager, for god's sake. How could she be expected to do this, to-

She savagely cut the thought off and rubbed her face roughly. She wasn't going to think about it. She was going to sit here and wait for the rain, and then...

Raiku's attention was grabbed by the Plot's oily, amorphous mass lurching around in what she felt was a distinctly ominous sign of excitement. Or anger, but the little bastards tended to bite when they got tetchy, so that probably wasn't it. It started emitting short, choppy bursts of sound that made her skin crawl; snippets of voices, of her own voice and ones she knew, raised to different pitches by whatever stress they would one day undergo at the little monster's behest. Cut into jagged vowels, clipped syllables and rendered meaningless but utterly, utterly wrong.

She waved the arm it was attached to and resorted to smacking it against the window when that failed to provoke a response. The little bastard made a wounded sound in her own voice and slithered around her elbow towards her torso to protect itself. 'Oh no you don't,' Raiku growled, scraping her upper arm against the windowsill to dissuade it. 'We had a deal. You stay where I can see you-'

There was a knock on her door. 'Raiku. Your teacher's here,' her father said through the wood, a strained note of cheer in his voice. This was new too. They'd danced around each other for so long as unwitting Plot Device and Gairano family head that they hadn't felt like family until the Sound invasion was over and they realised the distance they had allowed to grow between them.

Raiku frowned. 'He shouldn't be,' she replied, trying to minimise the backlash this deviance from her Genematrix entry schedule would inevitably cause. She held her breath and listened, hoping that would earn her some leeway.

Her father opened the door and gave a helpless shrug, along with a wry smile. This made her drop her guard instantly, having expected more anger. She managed a small, but genuine smile in return, the two simply looking at each other for a moment, before she remembered Yamada's presence and sagged. So much for a peaceful day of brooding. Shoulders still slumped, she dragged herself over to the door and down the hallway, keeping her eyes lowered as she passed her father's raised eyebrows and affectionate grin.

Things were getting better, slowly. She knew her father truly loved her and wanted what was best for her and he knew, he _knew_ that it was part of the Plot, but a lifetime of habits and secrecy didn't make it any easier for anyone to adjust to suddenly having one attached to a family member. It made it no easier to cater to one, to having to actually actively participate in the behaviours they had so long been conditioned to avoid.

Just inside the door, not even far enough into the house to need to take his shoes off, Yamada beamed at her in a malevolent way, enormous hands set on his hips. Raiku's posture subconsciously straightened under the weight of his dark gaze.

It wasn't _fair_. He was standing on ground over two feet lower than the rest of the house and she _still_ had to tilt her head back to even look him in the jaw.

"Speedy, get your shoes! We're going to go _training_," he declared with relish.

Raiku squinted at him. The muscles involved in this were so sore from Brooding that it ached. '…I've been on medical leave.' And so she had. In the chaos that had followed the Sound invasion and the Hokage's assassination, Raiku had been recovering in Daisukenojo's house under the terrifying, hawk-like gaze of the Hatori matriarch. It had gone slowly, probably not helped by the deeply not-restful atmosphere of a house full of insane, walking freckles. Why, oh, _why_ hadn't she gone to Ryuu's house? Oh, right, she remembered. Because he was convinced she was working to kill herself and was treating her with the kind of bullying watchfulness that was fast becoming his trademark expression of concern. It had taken so long for her knee in particular to heal, in fact, that by the time she had emerged, Sasuke's glorious betrayal and the failed retrieval of his broody, ungrateful self had come and gone.

Yamada's dark eyes gleamed.

"And now you aren't, get me?!" Raiku instinctively tensed when he took a breath, his enormous chest expanding to well over double her width. "Move, move, move!"

The bellowed orders reached her brain before her ears had stopped ringing, without the interference of her higher thought processes, and she found herself scrambling to put her shoes on before she'd really even registered what he'd said. She was relieved, when he'd shouted her outside into the surprisingly chilly air, that the terror she felt whenever he so much as looked at her had abated slightly, somewhere since she'd seen him running from nurses a quarter of his size in a panic.

It was only when Raiku had narrowly avoided being bodily thrown down the steep hill that bracketed the Gairano compound that she came to her senses, digging her heels into the ground so abruptly that she skidded for a few metres before stopping. 'Wait!'

Yamada half-turned towards her, already gearing up to shout her into submission. She threw out her spidery hands in desperate supplication. 'I have a reason! I have a reason!'

When he paused and gave her a suspicious look, she gingerly curled all but the pointer finger of one of her hands towards her palm, leaving the finger pointed directly at the overbearing thunderclouds shifting slowly in the lower atmosphere. His gaze flicked up, then back at her, growing even more suspicious. She immediately cowered and dropped her head. 'I meant that it's going to rain! I didn't do that!'

_How could she even do that_, an inner voice grumbled. _The damn stuff is water_.

Water… her natural enemy. This combined with Yamada, a fine example of her natural predator (from a wide selection of sentient Anythings), was not leaving her feeling optimistic. But _by god_, she was going to give it her best shot. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and nodded decisively.

"I can see the damn sky, Speedy!"

Raiku's eye twitched slightly, but her face remained in the largely covered expression of determined cheer she'd pasted on.

"What, you thought I'd forgotten about our little training sessions!?"

Raiku's previously characteristic cheerful face froze in a moment of panic, honestly trying to recall when that had happened. What sessions!? There was nothing about storms in there! Certainly not about- _he wouldn't_.

Yamada saw the horror dawning in her electric eyes and started chuckling malevolently. The sheer enormity of his ribcage lent the act a complex depth of sound. An appropriately dramatic soundtrack for her impending doom. "That's right, Speedy! We're going to be doing _special _training today, get me?"

Above them, power crackled in the dark, low-hanging clouds. The wind had picked up slightly and the temperature dropped a few degrees to signal the impending rain that they could smell clearly in the otherwise oppressively charged air.

Raiku finally took this in, staring at Yamada from her crouching position on the slope. The imminent thunderstorm she'd been given permission to (discreetly) enjoy was suddenly something far more terrifying. 'No,' she tried, voice coming out more as a jagged exhale than a sound. She swallowed dryly and tried again. 'No!'

Yamada gave her a stern look and folded his arms, immune to Raiku's enormous blue gaze of utter pleading. "Get going, Speedy."

After a solid few moments of silent pleading and equally silent refusal, Raiku straightened as slowly as the stereotypical crone she was inevitably going to enrage some day.

Yamada cut her off before she could even take a step. "And in case you're thinking about running…" He nodded meaningfully to someone down the road, towards the training ground.

Yes, Raiku thought with resignation, not even bothering to look. Ryuu _would_ volunteer for this. With a heavy sigh, she slouched down the hill and drew level with Yamada, who was suddenly all smiles, talking excitedly about the plans he had.

"Throw lightning at it" seemed the main component. But as they grew closer and closer to the long grass of the training grounds and their companion grew more visible, the more the heavy feeling of resigned dread grew in her stomach.

'That's not Ryuu, there,' she muttered to Yamada, gaze baleful.

"Nope."

'…Neither is it Daisukenojo.'

Yamada's beatific smile beamed out at the world through the net of scar tissue that surrounded his mouth. "Nope."

They grew ever closer, the sky above settling into the final moments of stillness, just before a storm.

Raiku's gaze flattened.

'…It is either a girl, or Hyuuga Neji.'

The Plot wiggled joyously on her stomach. Of course. It needed a way to Naruto and the main plot, and why not Neji, who was already involved and knew her? Why not Neji, because _it was a sociopath_.

Yamada sighed happily, waving at Ryuu and what a merciful god would have made a girl, but now was a coldly staring Hyuuga.

'Why is it Hyuuga Neji, oh god?' Raiku asked the sky sadly.

Yamada answered instead. "Call it payback. _Imagine _my surprise when he sees you lit up like a Christmas tree and doesn't bat an eyelid!"

Well, one secret out of the bag.

Raiku slumped down to possibly half her actual size, as though it would save her. Neji nodded respectfully to Yamada when they reached him, falling into pace beside her teacher on the opposite side. 'Yamada-san.'

"Hyuuga," Yamada greeted, rubbing his hands together and casting a critical eye to the sky. "We don't have much time to go over things, so this is what we're gonna do. Speedy, you're going to take off…" he waved a hand vaguely up and down, as though her clothes were too offensive for him to openly identify. "… some of that. Hyuuga's going to use the Byakugan on you and see what's going on while you practice, get me?"

Neji nodded.

Raiku was less clear, remembering to ask a question after she'd spent a few seconds frowning at her clothes in confusion. 'Wait, won't he get blinded?' she asked dubiously, already obediently tugging at the tight leather glove she was wearing.

Yamada seemed pleased. "Good thinking!"

_Yes!_

"But it's taken care of!"

_Damnit!_

"The Byakugan doesn't work _quite_ like normal vision when activated, so it shouldn't do him any harm."

She could just _feel_ the look Neji was giving her for daring to doubt his abilities.

She was going to have to bite the bullet. They had already reached the fringe of the training grounds. 'Surely Hinata would be better!?' she tried desperately, aiming for an expression of her genuine unease and only hitting awkward rudeness. It was force of habit, really. There was nothing she excelled so surely at.

There was an affronted silence from Neji, like there was whenever Hinata was mentioned.

"Shut up and get on with it, get me!?"

Raiku sighed heavily and started unwrapping the arm bindings, dragging it out in her reluctance. The cool air made goosebumps stand out on her skin, but nothing as spectacular as last time she'd been exposed near a Hyuuga. Neji's careful scrutiny and the flare of chakra that no doubt signalled the Byakugan activation made her feel oddly naked, but … it was just her arms.

She paused slightly, then finished one arm and moved to the next as she simultaneously toed off her shoes. But… when was she going to get this chance again? Neither Yamada nor Neji really cared, though Neji thought she was a 'thing' rather than a person and loathed her. A low sound and sporadic drops of rain marked the beginning of the downpour. She felt, rather than heard, the rumbling in the clouds above, and the tell-tale rush of excitement that always accompanied it.

In the only surge of recklessness she'd yet allowed herself to experience, Raiku reached up and yanked her mask down to pool around her neck, a sharp breath forced from her from both the unfortunate knowledge that she'd regret it and the first drop of rain hitting her skin and shining.

Fortunately, Yamada had no sense of ceremony.

"Spark up, Speedy!"

Like it worked that way. But seconds later it may as well have, the deluge starting and sending walls of rain thudding downwards into them at the signal of a thunderous crack.

Raiku flashed into life like a lightning bolt.

Yamada shaded his eyes and squinted until the flare died down, leaving her sparking.

It wasn't serene. More Plot-important people, when they shone, shone with gentle, shining light, or waves of consistent darkness. Raiku wasn't like that. It wasn't nearly so inspiring.

In fact, he noted with exasperation, it was kind of weird.

Raiku didn't notice through the rush of adrenaline and fierce _joy_, but the electricity on her skin was flaring up at each new point of contact as well as shimmering in the water running down in rivulets, making her alternately spotted and striped in disturbing patterns.

Yamada cast a glance to Neji, whose veins around the eyes were distended in the trademark tell of Byakugan use, his gaze intense and unblinking.

He said nothing.

Yamada internally lamented at Raiku not sharing her secret with a more experienced user.

The charge on Raiku was building slowly. She could feel the electricity bouncing under her skin and seeping out of her pores to gleefully meet freedom. The hair plastered to her face and neck crackled with energy. It felt like being too big for her skin, too much for her body. It felt like being separate from her spidery limbs and constant foot-in-mouth, the Plot she carried so reluctantly to her fate.

She closed her glowing eyes and let the charge build and build to a growing crescendo and felt at peace for a moment that could only have been a fraction of a second, but that stilled her constantly racing heart and the energy she felt always bouncing off her insides.

"Go!" Yamada barked.

Raiku opened her eyes and her restraint and the world split in half for a moment with a crack of thunder that shook the earth and drove Neji a step back, leaving both his and Yamada's ears ringing violent. Underlying it was the euphoric shout Raiku couldn't restrain that rushed out of her with everything else, half-laughter. She couldn't stop herself from leaping into the air and darting from place to place, bolts of lightning chasing her and scorching, cracking the earth whenever it missed her.

Yamada took this terrifying, uncoordinated frolicking in with stoic deafness. Neji looked deeply ... something negative, it was hard to tell. Disgusted? Disturbed? A more dignified version of freaked out?

"Getting anything?" Yamada asked loudly.

Neji didn't answer, either because of deafness, concentration or hypnotism.

"Guess not."

* * *

A/N: I swear things will improve as I get into the swing of it again! Yes. He hates her. FEEDBACK WELCOME.

Reviewer Responses:

Buziwuzi: Yay! That's really good to see and really encouraging! Thanks for reviewing!

Guest: I... I'm sorry? Here it is?

blackcherrynuke: Thank you! Happy to be back, hope not to disappoint.

1412 karasu: It really is. It's even in her name, it really IS who she is. Another Neji or Naruto? Reviewers are meeeeean and hilarious. Thanks for reviewing.

Skiwiziks: Yes it is, and yes you are! Thank you so much for your kind words and sticking with me. It's tricky, but I'm trying to get the hang of it again. Thank you for saying that about its internal logical framework, it keeps me up at night. Thank you!

Parrot Post: Not mobs! I'm allergic! Neji in a dress would be infinitely more attractive than Raiku in the same. I should be sleeping. We can procrastinate together. Thanks for reviewing!

SSHiei: Raiku colliding usually has that effect. Thank you! Obscurity laughs at me, but the reference is much appreciated.

Aotrs Commander: Thank you, that means a huge deal. I'm glad it had that effect, and hope it continues to! Thank you for your well wishes, things seem better. Thanks as well for reviewing.

srooone: yes... quality... that's why it's being updated... *cough*... Thanks!

You guys. You guys. I love you guys. Please let me know if I mess up, I'm out of practice.


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